The Day I Was One With Mick Jagger

But I wasn’t dancing in the streets.

When I saw the post that Mick had to have aortic valve surgery, a thrum of shock hit me. Not, like most of his fans, because of the realization that our rock idol had slipped into old age. Docs call us folks over 70 elderly. And yes, it’s a medical term.

I happened to have an inside track on what Mick had in store for him.

I, too, had undergone aortic valve replacement. And trust me, Mick may have posted a video of himself dancing his head off six weeks or so after surgery, but his journey hasn’t been a walk in the park.

I got the news that my ticker wasn’t ticking according to schedule in my fifties.

A doc listened to my heart and said I had a murmur. No worries, I thought. My mother had lived and died with a murmur and it never caused her any harm. The irony though, was that I’d written heart-healthy cookbooks with a cardiologist at Stanford. I should have been the poster child for a healthy heart. Turns out, mostly I was.

Our condition couldn’t be blamed on a reckless lifestyle or helped by a lean diet and exercise. We’d been dealt a lousy hand of cards.

I don’t know about Mick, but crotchety valves seem to be a thing in my family. When I chose my doctor at my new job years earlier, it turned out I’d unwittingly picked a winner. In addition to treating my sore throats over the years, he was a cardiologist, a two-fer I once thought was overkill.

When he gave me my new diagnosis, it didn’t sound all that troublesome. In fact, I eventually completed a marathon and pretty much continued on with my life for the next fifteen years. Nothing ever changed in my numbers–the key to whether or not you need corrective surgery–until they did.

My doctor memorably said when I was 67, and about to embark on a late-life marriage, you’ll probably never need the surgery. You’re heart always stays the same. You’re in excellent health, you take great care of yourself, and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t continue. Write that down, I should have said.

Two stressful years later, at the end of the marriage-not assigning blame. Takes two to tango and all that, but I came out of that union with almost as many health issues as a thousand piece puzzle. Heart palpitations, debilitating pain in my legs pointed to polymyalgia rheumatica, but that search for a diagnosis uncovered thyroid issues, and later possible uterine cancer popped up. And my valve numbers had changed. Stress? You tell me.

I got steroids for my muscle pain and treatment for my thyroid. Heartbeats calmed down. Dizzy spells started, but with everything else going on, I ascribed them to steroids.

What kind of train wreck had hit my former good health?

The thyroid nodules began inching toward possible cancer and the solution was to take the bloody thing out. From what I’d read, even if it was the big C, it was the best kind to have. Friends and family rallied around me, prepared to handle whatever came up in the few days I’d need to recoup from the surgery. I had a world class surgeon at one of the best hospitals on the planet. What, me worry? I showed up for my preop with instructions from my cardiologist to tell them about my latest echo, the test that keeps track of heart valves.

When the preop nurse looked at the echo, her jaw dropped, and I knew I was in trouble.

She rushed to call the anesthesiologist to give him the numbers, and he canceled thyroid surgery until I had my heart fixed. I wouldn’t survive it he said. Now this news would be frightening on its own. But what none of my medical professionals knew was my family history with pesky heart valves.

A first cousin had one back in the seventies. Never told anyone the diagnosis, told her family she was just going into New York Hospital for some minor procedure. But she died on the operating table. She had put off the surgery too long, and they couldn’t’ take her off the heart-lung machine.

And then my niece had the surgery in her fifties.

When the nurse told me I could drop dead driving my car if I didn’t have it done immediately, the face of my mother’s sister flashed before my eyes. She died on the street carrying her groceries home, and I instantly realized the cause.

I then did what any reasonable person would do. I burst into inconsolable tears. Did Mick do that when he got the news?

I cried not just for myself. But because every week I’d pick up my young nephew from middle school in my car and drive him around for our play date. To the hamburger place for his favorite lunch. To the mall for ice cream. To the skateboarding park. Suppose something had happened to me while he was in the car with me?

Can you operate now I asked the surgeon my cardiologist arranged for me? Well, you see I was taking those steroids. The ones for my muscle pains. The ones I thought were making me dizzy. It turns out, he said, you should have told me about those spells. Steriods don’t make you dizzy. But a failing heart valve does. They’d been going on for almost a year.

Had I waited too long? Like my cousin and my aunt?

I didn’t know, because I had to taper off the steroids before I could have the surgery. Steroids can cause infections, and an infection after heart surgery could kill me. So for a month, I took fewer pills each day until my last pill was gone, afraid to leave my apartment for fear I’d drop dead on the street like my aunt. Until finally I entered the hospital.

Mick didn’t mention this part of his preop experience in his jaunty video. How worried he might have been that his last concert might have truly been his last.

Obviously, I survived. Without getting addicted to pain pills like the man who wrote a memoir about his experience with open heart surgery. Without serious cognitive issues like a disturbing percentage of people who have surgeries requiring being hooked up to the pump-the heart-lung machine, with a filter that keeps most but sometimes not all particles from reaching the brain.

Without becoming one of the small percentage of people who suffer massive strokes the week after the surgery. And all the other awful things that can happen when one human being cracks open the sternum of another, moves the lungs and other organs around, and slices open the heart, the organ that keeps us alive.

My surgery saved my life. As Mick’s did his. I had some complications that prolonged my recovery that Mick apparently didn’t. Eventually, they resolved.

This surgery is not as common as tonsillitis, but it’s no longer as complicated as sending a space shuttle to Mars. Yet, I’d say no thank you to one, unless you need it to survive.

I’m happy Mick came out of his singing and dancing, but I hope folks don’t get the idea that you don’t have to worry about your health. That a few nips and tucks will fix whatever ails you. I think if you got Mick into a quiet corner with the camera turned off he’d tell you the rest of the story.

Like, thank bloody god for good surgeons. It’s a tough road to recovery, no matter how long or short, but one worth taking. If you’re like me, you ignore signs at your peril. I had an astonishing cascade of events that led to my surgery. Without each piece leading to the thyroid issue that pointed to my need for heart surgery, I might not be here.

Maybe the same is true for Mick and he’s just not telling. I don’t know. One thing’s for sure. Without our life-saving surgeries, we wouldn’t be dancing in the streets.