Turnaround Time by Oscar Munoz

Author:Oscar Munoz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Game of Hearts

I wondered if I’d ever have the chance to return to Mexico, to again feel the warmth of its sun and the kindness of its people, during those cold and gloomy days in November 2015 as I recovered from the heart attack.

A little more than three weeks had passed since I took that fateful run along the Chicago lakefront. Now, I faced the daunting task of simply learning how to walk again. I still couldn’t stand on my own two feet, much less put one of them in front of the other. A few days after the doctors had implanted the LVAD that assisted my heart, the same nurses and orderlies who had so kindly carried me back and forth out of bed so I could look good for the doctors lifted me once more onto a gurney. They strapped me down tightly for the short drive from Northwestern Hospital to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), which fortunately happened to be ranked as the best physical therapy hospital in the nation.

A medically induced coma withers not only one’s skeletal muscle mass; it also ravages one’s sense of equilibrium and coordination. I would have to slowly rebuild my ability to perform even the most basic tasks.

Each day, my RIC nurses would knock at my door and take me to physical therapy, a place where you check your ego at the door. I was used to running marathons; now, a shuffle of five feet—before falling into a wheelchair—became a cause for celebration. I also needed to train my right arm, reviving the damaged muscles, tendons, and nerves that had been severed by the fasciotomy surgery.

Standing upright with the support of parallel bars, tossing a beanbag against a wall and managing to catch it, stepping onto a low-rise platform and stepping back down—I took small victories wherever I could get them. But victories paled in comparison to the mighty inspirational triumphs of my fellow patients.

There was one man, a former championship boxer paralyzed in a car crash, who was recovering with me. One day, the physical therapists placed him in a harness that suspended him slightly above a treadmill so he could get the sensation of walking upright for the first time since his accident. From the look of pride and sheer joy in his eyes, you might have thought he was standing on the gold medal platform at the Olympics, or on Everest’s summit. I never saw a person stand taller than he did in that moment.

There was another young man, no older than mid-twenties, whose courageous survival from a deadly virus tragically left him a quadruple amputee. Though he had endured a greater share of life’s misfortune than I can ever imagine, when I saw him at the hospital’s church services no one sang louder or laughed more than he did—his joy at simply being alive seemed more of a divine revelation to me than even the liturgy itself.

I felt humbled to be in the presence of such people, some of the strongest I’ve ever met in my life.

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