JULY 07, 2024

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JIM McCUTCHON

First Chance:

 

As I begin to write this, I am 94 years old, and I have no idea why I am still here. I have outlived two wives and three of my children. My friends seem to be dropping off all around me. Yet I go on. Why? I’ve asked God about it since God is the ultimate determinant of who lives and who dies. God’s only answer, as far as I can tell, is silence. God doesn’t speak directly to me. Does God speak only to saints? I’m not a saint. Oh, that may be a clue. I might need to clean up my life before I am fit to enter heaven. Well anyway! I think I will go over the chances I have had to die, chances that I did not take. Obviously.

 

The first chance happened when I was, I think, 20 years old. We were on a family trip, and we were in Santa Monica, California, at the beach. Surfing was not yet the popular sport that it is today. At least, I was not aware of it if it was, but there were young men body surfing. It looked like fun, and I decided to watch them for a while and then try it myself. Being young and strong, I had no problem swimming out through the surf as I had seen my role models do. Then, I swam toward the shore as I had also seen them do, waited for the wave to crest and tried to ride it. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. The only description for what took place is that I fell forward. When the wave that I should have been riding crested, it pitched me into what I have later learned is termed “the washing machine”. I was completely at the mercy of the power of the wave to spin me and spin me, underwater. Fortunately, I retained the ability to think clearly. What did I think? “I am going to die.”

 

I didn’t die. I am still alive because I had second thoughts. I didn’t know which way was up and which down, but I knew I had to go somewhere. I thrusted myself in one direction. It turned out to be down, and I felt the sand. Okay. The other way must be up. I got my feet below me, bent my knees, exploded up and came out into the air. What a great sense of freedom and life! Having been carried toward the beach, the waves were calmer where I came up. I swam easily, got out of the water and walked over to where my mother and my sister were lying on towels. When I picked up a towel, my sister asked, “Aren’t you going to swim anymore?”

 

“No. I‘ve had enough for now.” I never did tell them what had happened.

 

 

Second chance:

 

 

Santa Monica was not the only place I nearly drowned. The other place was close to home, in Corpus Christi Bay. We were having a nice leisurely sail. Jeanne and some of the children were in our Pearson Commander, a 26-foot, full keel sailboat. It’s name was Foolhardy, a well-chosen name. We had an inflated inner tube which we tied to a rope and dragged behind the boat. When the various children who were along tired of riding in the inner tube, I decided to try it. It was boring. Looking to make it more interesting, I decided to put my feet through the center hole of the inner tube, point my body forward and spread my arms wide to look like I was soaring. I soared for a few minutes until a surge of water knocked me over backwards with my feet trapped in the inner tube and my head trailing behind. I tried to sit up. The water had other ideas. I tried to turn sideways. That didn’t help either. I knew no one on the boat was watching me, and I envisioned them being horrified when they found me, lifeless and water soaked. There was only one chance to survive. I had to be strong enough to sit up in spite of the water forcing me back. It’s amazing how strong the tug of a heavy sailboat can be. and how strong a desperate man can be. I made it, barely. Back in the inner tube, resting from my exertion, I looked at my family. They were all looking where they were going, not back at dear old, nearly dead Dad. Another chance to die missed.

 

 

Third chance:

 

I have known and admired Louie Kihneman since he was in high school. Louie was a senior in the minor seminary when my eldest son, Fred, was a freshman. They played basketball together. Louie stayed on, eventually to be ordained a priest and then Bishop of Biloxi, Mississippi. Fred left. He said he liked girls too much to become a celibate priest.

 

In April, 2019, I drove alone, I was a widower, from Corpus Christi to Biloxi to attend Louie’s consecration. On the way back, I stopped in Live Oak Cemetery in Pass Christian. I always feel in touch with the past there. Many of my ancestors are buried in Live oak Cemetery. I drove through the entry where one of the large gate posts had been toppled by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and not replaced in an upright position, continued on a dirt path, hardly worthy to be called a road and stopped by the familiar place where my ancestors were lying in their tombs. As usual, the cemetery was deserted. That was part of the charm of the place. I walked around, and as I walked, I came to a place where there were two identical graves side bt side. They were flat and raised about a foot above the surface of the surrounding ground. At one end, presumably the head, there was an etched stone that told who was lying in that grave.. Leaning against the headstone was a heavy concrete cross. I didn’t know who they were, but I knew they must have been part of my ancestry. Curious, I took hold of the top of one of the crosses and lifted a little so that i could read the inscription. I lifted too far. The cross fell forward, hitting my leg, knocking me off the grave and depositing the cross on my right leg. I had landed on my right shoulder, and it hurt. I lay there a while, thinking. I was unable to reach the cell phone in my pocket, and, even if I did, who could I call? The emptiness that I had found so charming was becoming alarming. I tried to pull my leg out. Failed. I tried to lift the cross from my leg using my left hand. Too heavy. So, this is how I die, alone in a deserted cemetery. Well, not without a fight. I was going to have to use the strength of both of my arms. With my right shoulder screaming in pain, I was able to move the heavy cross an inch, just enough to wiggle free.

 

I drove to Baton Rouge using only my left hand, stayed at the home of one of my stepchildren that night and drove to Corpus Christi the next day.

 

My life had not ended, but my tennis career had. My shoulder was beyond repair, and I could never hit a serve or an overhead again.

 

 

Fourth chance:

 

One of the reasons my shoulder injury was beyond repair was that I had aortic stenosis, and anesthesia for the shoulder surgery I needed would be too dangerous. By the time I had a replacement aortic valve in place, the shoulder muscles that had been torn were too scarred in and too shrunken for repair.

 

That brings me to the next story. When Bob Madry, my long-time cardiologist, told me that my condition had progressed from mild to serious, he said I should start studying my options. I did, and I discovered that the chance of death was 50% at three years from the time a patient with aortic stenosis began to have symptoms. I was having symptoms. The clock was ticking, and my options were limited. Previous heart surgery followed by wound infection had made open surgical repair impossible. I’ll tell about that in another segment.

 

Fortunately, there was an alternative, TAVR, which stands for trans arterial aortic valve replacement. In this procedure, the original, calcified valve is broken up by balloon dilation and the new valve is positioned in its place. Of course, the fragments of tissue and calcium have to go somewhere, and some of it goes through the carotid arteries to the brain. The chance of stroke from the debris was, to me, unacceptable. I didn’t relish the idea of curing my heart valve problem only to leave me crippled by a major stroke or demented by multiple small strokes.

 

Further research turned up the information that there was a possible solution. It was called the Sentinel System, and it consisted of two filters placed in the carotid arteries to catch te debris before it got to the brain. It had been used in Europe for two years, and it worked with very few and very minor side effects. For some reason, the FDA decided not to approve the Sentinel System until a study had been done in the good old USA. I thought that was strange, but my choices were now limited to going to Europe for my TAVR and waiting to see if I would die. I decided to wait.

 

 I had also learned that there were three primary centers doing the FDA-mandated study. One was at the Cleveland Clinic. I sent a blind email to “info at Cleveland Clinic” asking if someone there could tell me how long the study would take. 48 hours later, I got this short reply: “At least a year and a half”. At the bottom of that reply was the word, “Samir”. What is that? More reading on the Cleveland Clinic web site delivered the answer. Samir was the name of the chief of interventional cardiology, Samir Kapadia.

 

My symptoms got progressively worse until I had to stop playing tennis to let my heart rate return to normal and to catch my breath. One of my friends became alarmed. He said, “If you die on the court, I’m going to kill you.”  We can laugh about that now, but it was serious, deadly serious in the most literal sense. I know of at least three people who have died on the tennis court. I nearly died, but I made it to Cleveland in time, and Samir replaced my valve in July, 2017.

 

 

Fifth chance:

 

This is not in chronological order, but here it is anyway.

 

In 1992, I had an unrecognized heart attack on a Saturday. The pain was not typical. My right arm hurt. Supposed to be my left arm, but it doesn’t have to be there. An EKG was said to be normal, but Bob Madry was suspicious enough to schedule me for further testing, and that test led to being scheduled for a coronary angiogram on a Friday at noon. I was aware that Bob had a trip planned starting later that afternoon, but it didn’t bother me. After all, it was just a minor procedure. What could happen?

 

I was drugged but half awake. Bob outlined my coronary arteries with dye and said, “You have a 100% obstruction of the LAD. I’m going to put a wire across it and dilate it.” Groggily, I asked how he could do that if it was 100% obstructed. Didn’t stop Bob. He slipped the wire through and inflated a balloon. That woke me up!! I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest, and I was eager for him to deflate that damn balloon. He did, and the pain went away. I have to pause to say that the LAD is the left anterior descending artery that runs down the front of the heart. Obstruction of that vessel is known as the widow maker. Why didn’t I die from my heart attack?

 

That is not the end of this “chance to die”.

 

Everything was going along well, and I was thinking about going home. Until about 6:00 pm. I “crashed”. Paul Heath, Bob’s partner, was called, and i was back in the same room where I had been at noon. Paul put some dye in my coronary artery and found that my LAD was dissecting, a technical term for what happens when the layers of the artery begin to tear apart. Why did I survive that? I shouldn’t have, but I did, long enough for Sergio Tavares to get there, get my chest open and repair my torn LAD by implanting my left internal mammary artery to it. 

 

It’s not over. In the rush to save my life, the usual protocol for sterile technic was not followed. I got a raging infection throughout my chest, and Sergio had to reopen it to provide drainage. This time, the sternal incision was not closed completely. I went home with an open wound packed with iodoform; a gauze soaked in anti-bacterial iodine solution.

 

That all took place 32 years ago, and I am still living on that internal mammary artery.

 

 

Sixth chance:

 

Jeanne and I had gone to noon Mass at St. Patrick’s on Alameda and were planning to go to lunch at a restaurant to the South. Having parked Jeanne’s Cadillac Seville in the lot behind the church, I drove on Rossiter to Alameda, planning to cross it and turn left. I waited at the stop sign for an opening in the traffic so I could cross the north bound lanes and fit into an opening in a southbound lane.

 

To my left, I saw two cars side by side, both light blue. They were not going fast, and I judged that I had plenty of time. To my right, I saw a potential opening. As I started across, looking to my right to check that opening, I heard Jeanne shout, “Look out!” I hit the brakes, and I was hit, hard, from my left side. A two door Honda coupe smashed into my left front tire area and spun the Caddy around.

 

I was stunned. Where did that car come from?

 

I was okay, and I was sure Jeanne, sitting on the side away from the crash, was also okay, but I didn’t know about the driver of the little Honda, so I got out to check. A pretty, Hispanic lady who looked to be in her twenties got out. She was obviously unhurt. She said, “I was on my lunch hour, and I was in a hurry to see my dad in the hospital.” I didn’t say anything that I remember, but Jeanne did when I got back to our car. “You didn’t stop to see if I was hurt but got out to see about her.” She was shocked by what had happened and hurt by my supposed insensitivity. No use trying to explain that I had considered her safe.

I said nothing.

 

The two blue cars did not stop to tell what they had seen unfold before their eyes. I wish they had.

 

When the policeman arrived, he was a young Hispanic man. I told him I did not see the Honda. I don’t know what the other driver told him. After considering everything, he said to me, “I’m not going to give you a ticket. You would just pay it anyway.” At the time, I wondered why he had been so generous. Hadn’t I been at fault for coming out of the stop sign into traffic? I figured it out later, much later.

 

My memory is hazy about how we got home and how we got lunch. I don’t even know if we ever did get lunch. I was going over in my mind what had happened. If Jeanne had not warned me and I had not hit the brakes, that Honda would have hit us on the driver’s door, right where I was sitting. That little car had turned our heavy car around by the force of the hit, a force strong enough to have killed me.

 

Slowly over several days, I figured out why I had not seen the Honda and why the policeman had not given me a ticket. Alameda, at that point has five lanes, two northbound, two southbound and a turning lane in the middle. The driver of the Honda had been out of sight behind the two blue cars when I looked in that direction. She was in the turning lane, planning to turn into the hospital parking lot across the street from the church, and she was speeding. She had flashed by the two blue cars, found me in her path and been unable to stop. The policeman didn’t want to give me a ticket because the crash was her fault. She was speeding and illegally passing in the turning lane. He didn’t want to give her a ticket because she was so pretty, and he felt sorry for her.

 

I lost Jeanne’s car, but she saved my life. I bought her another Cadillac.

 

 

Seventh Chance:

 

This was maybe not a really close one, but it might have been.

 

It was in 1948 or 1949. My premed society at Loyola of the South (New Orleans) had a planned trip to Carville. That’s the name everyone used for the National Leprosarium at Carville. Louisiana. I had been able to borrow my parents’ car. In those days, like most people, we only had one car. Since only three of us were to ride in my car, we all sat in the front seat, without seat belts. No cars had seat belts then. I was driving in a three-car caravan when we came to the turn off from the highway to a side road. Being low on gas, I stopped to fill up. The others went ahead, leaving us to catch up knowing we couldn’t get lost. That side road led directly to the leprosarium.

 

As I entered the side road, I noticed that there was a fresh, deep load of gravel on the surface. Louisiana sometimes lags behind on road work. I drove a bit faster than usual in order to catch up, but I didn’t speed, not on loose gravel. Up ahead, I noticed a ridge of loose gravel lying at 45 degrees to the road. I didn’t have time to stop, but I did slow down as I considered what to do. Best way to hit that ridge is at right angles, so I got as for to the right as possible and angled left. It worked - until it didn’t. The first three tires made the transition perfectly, but the gravel ridge caught the fourth one, the right rear, throwing the car into a tailspin with the left rear headed for the bar ditch. Did I mention that there were deep bar ditches on both sides of the road? No? Well, maybe that’s because I didn’t pay attention to the ditches until now, but I sure paid attention when I thought of going into one of them.!

 

All I could think of as I reacted instinctively to the exigencies of driving was, “How do I tell my dad I wrecked his car?”

 

We narrowly missed going in the ditch as I was able to pull it out, but the back end of the car was now going back and forth like the tail of a happy dog, and it kept heading for the opposite ditch. Our near misses as we veered back and forth gradually became slower and finally, we were sitting quietly in the center of the road. I turned to my two friends in the front seat and said, “That was fun. Want to try it again?” Their silence and their pale faces gave me the expected answer.

 

I visited the leper colony on Molokai many years later. A staff physician introduced us to lepers and told us the history of the disease and how it was now controllable by new medicines called sulfones. When he finished his presentation, he added a word of caution about the loose gravel. Three of us didn’t need to be warned.

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