Healing

May 31, 2008 at 12:04 PM

I haven't been blogging recently because I've been in Cleveland where my father is having heart surgery. He is a patient at the Cleveland Clinic, where he had mitral valve repair. The operation went well and he's recovering strongly, and should be able to go home next week. I've been in a guest house next to the clinic for several days with my mom, and now it's time for me to go home and my brother to come take my place.

I'd never been to Cleveland before apart from visiting a college friend in the suburbs over 10 years ago.
The Cleveland Clinic is centrally located, and it's not far from both Case Western Reserve and the Cleveland Institute of Music, which I saw for the first time yesterday. Both are beautiful campuses from what I saw driving by and I was thinking of the v.commies who went or are going to one of those great places in the future.

The vibrant musical atmosphere in Cleveland is in evidence at the Clinic. Classical music plays in the lobby near the main entrance--and I mean truly classical with some baroque thrown in. It's usually violin music, too, making me feel wistful for having left my instrument a thousand miles away. The Clinic has a choir. Our ICU nurse coordinator was a member of this choir, who treated us to a half-hour concert on Wednesday at noon, which was right while my dad was having his surgery. There wasn't much to do at that time but tensely wait, and it helped to have the concert to listen to.

My father was given a CD of guided imagery accompanied by classical music to listen to during the pre-op and post-op recovery period. The caregivers stressed several times that listening to this CD would help with pain management and recovery. My father is not a musician and he rarely listens to music of any kind on his own. But he bought a cheap CD player on doctor's orders. I wish I could report that even he was won over by the music, but he wasn't. He listened to the CD part way through and pronounced it "boring." We bought him a non-fiction audiobook instead, which he is going to try today. Nine hours of Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat." Updated version.

The Clinic also has a website where you can update a patient's status and family and friends can log in to check it. As the blogger in the family, I was given the job to update my dad's. It became a little obsessive for a while, I'd run to the terminal and update for every little thing: when he was off bypass, when he'd moved into and out of the ICU, when he first got up and walked around the room. But our family is distributed all over the world, from Seattle to rural Pennsylvania to Hong Kong, and people checked in, and appreciated it.

I called home and as I suspected, the kids are running my husband a bit ragged. While I'm not there my daughter hasn't practiced her violin once. My husband is wondering if it's too late to put them up for adoption. The work emails are piling up so thick I'm afraid to log on. Sitting here in my violinist.com T-shirt at the guest house terminal, it's time to go home.

From Anne Horvath
Posted on May 31, 2008 at 3:46 PM

I hope your Dad is getting better!

From Tom Holzman
Posted on May 31, 2008 at 6:37 PM

Glad to hear your Dad came through o.k. May he have a swift recovery!

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on June 1, 2008 at 12:46 AM

I hope your father recovers quickly and smoothly, with or without the guided imagery.

One of my friends and her husband were visiting family in the high desert region of Oregon, when her husband had to be admitted to the local hospital for severe cardiac emergency surgery. This hospital gave nourishment to the soul as well as the body. There were beautiful views of the mountain from every room, and you could hire a harpist to play for a half hour for a patient in the patient's room. My friend, who is barely computer literate, took on the function of emailing bulletins about her husband to friends and family.

I'm sure your presence and caring for your father were good medicine for him.

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