Jim Reeves: On the long road to recovery

From my glass-walled room in the intensive care unit of the new Heart Center at Harris Hospital last week, I had a nice view of a colorful banner celebrating either my surgeon’s incredible determination or his insanity.

Not even he knows for sure which one it is.

It read: "Badwater Marathon Man. Dr. Stephen Hudgens. 135 Miles, 46:40."

In my delirium, I kept trying to do the math and couldn’t make it work. No one, I knew, could run 135 miles in 46 minutes, 40 seconds. Then, finally, during a break in the morphine, I suspect, it dawned on my addled brain. We weren’t talking minutes and seconds here. We were talking hours and minutes.

More than two solid days on the road ... in the heat of the summer ... in Death Valley.

There are cars today that can’t even do that.

Why put yourself through such torture, I asked Dr. Hudgens during one of our many confabs in that room in ICU over the next few days. I’m not sure I ever quite understood the answer, mostly because I’m not sure he knows himself what drives him to test the limits of human endurance.

Now I’m running my own race, having just as insanely joined a rather exclusive fraternity as a two-time survivor of heart bypass surgery. As elite as the membership seems to be, I can’t recommend it beyond the one inescapable bottom line. I’m still alive.

The first time was in 1995, when a heart attack forced an emergency single bypass. This time, mounting symptoms required a near-total rewire, a quintuple bypass. Even though the doctors keep telling me it’s mostly genetics, I feel pretty stupid having allowed myself to reach a second level in this dubious club.

Now I’m 10 days out of surgery, back home and contemplating life again. As happened the first time, I’ve been overwhelmed by a few essential truths and blessings.

The amazing strength, patience and grace of the woman I married almost 27 years ago, my lovely Karen.

The love and support of family and so many good friends and colleagues, who make me weep almost daily with some gesture of kindness, of caring.

The incredible power of prayer. As a friend told me the other day in eloquent and vivid imagery, "Step outside at night and that stream of light you’ll see bound from Earth to the heavens ... those are the prayers being lifted up for you." I believe it.

The wonderful cast of doctors and nurses who work so diligently and hard to not just save their patients, but to make them as comfortable as possible in an impossible situation. To all of them — to Jennifer and Jake, to Rob and Desiree and all the others whose names escape me now — I am eternally indebted and grateful.

I understand the part about having to walk that lonesome valley by yourself. It’s having to do it twice that’s a little confusing.

The hard part, I’m told, is behind me. Then again, most of the people saying that haven’t been here, either. But they’re right and I know the routine. My body has a lot of healing to do, not just from the disease, but from the cure.

The memory of flopping on the respirator like a hooked fish as my gag reflex went into overdrive in the hours immediately after the surgery is fading now. The bones in my twice split-open breastbone, the ribs broken in the process, grind a little less often when I cough these days.

Like I said, it’s not a club membership I would recommend. Better to do what you can instead to lower your cholesterol, exercise a little more, eat a little better.

That banner has stayed in my mind, though. It was there, a mocking challenge, when I took my first shuffling post-operative steps around the unit less than 48 hours after surgery, my oxygen tank wheeling along slowly behind me.

I only did half a lap around the 12-room ward that first day. Now I routinely walk to the end of our court and back. I’m getting there.

Running a mega-marathon, however, is still a bit beyond my comprehension, much less my ambition. But for the 53-year-old Hudgens, who had run so many "ordinary" marathons — more than 60 — that they were no longer a challenge, running the 100-milers is almost a religion.

"You get out there on these long runs and there’s nobody to talk to," Hudgens said. "You look around and see the beauty of nature, the stars and you think about the creator who did this and you start talking with him and building a relationship there.

"The race pushes you so hard, it pushes you to your limit, and there’s a spiritual point to it. You’re out there and you start talking to God."

It was just after the Badwater 135-miler in July that Hudgens heard his minister preach about the kingdom of God and a note was struck.

"What I’ve learned," Hudgens said, "is that the kingdom of God is here for you to discover now. There’s nothing that through our own perseverance coupled with God’s help, that we can’t tackle.

"I was reminded of that when I saw how many people, so many of them from your church and Sunday School class, were in that waiting room on the morning of your surgery."

What Hudgens knows and I’m discovering is that I find myself on my own dark desert road from time to time these days, shuffling sleeplessly from room to room at night, alone, talking to God.

It’s not a mega-marathon, by any means. It’s just life.

But like Dr. Hudgens, I’m convinced that the kingdom of God is where we find it. We don’t have to wait for heaven. A piece of it is already here.

I’ve seen it, up close and personal, in the breadth and width and incredible scope of love in my fellow man.

Twice.

You may see me on that dark road, shuffling along, one slow step at a time. You may even be making your own journey through the desert and we may go in lock-step for a while, or simply pass silently, like specters, in the night.

If I look familiar, it’s because some of us just have to do things over and over again to get it right.

I thank God for the opportunity.

See you again in December.