Culverhouse predicted that Parcells would coach the Packers, and three days later, Parcells did meet with Ron Wolf to discuss Green Bay’s opening, but the buddies didn’t reach an agreement. Now, decades later, Parcells explains that his health factored into the decision involving Tampa Bay. “I knew that I was having more than a little problem, and I was gonna have to deal with it. I just didn’t know quite what was wrong.”
Still, after a full week with no chest pains, Parcells began having serious second thoughts about rejecting an offer that included so much money and power. He telephoned Culverhouse to express renewed interest and to suggest another sit-down. Tampa Bay’s owner consented to meeting Parcells in Washington, D.C., on the morning of January 8, 1992. One day beforehand, Parcells lunched with Lou Piniella, the Cincinnati Reds manager. The two had become friends in the late 1980s when Piniella managed the Yankees. He grew up in West Tampa, where he starred in high school basketball before attending the University of Tampa on a baseball scholarship. At one of their favorite eating spots, Parcells picked Piniella’s brain about places to live in the manager’s hometown.
Culverhouse brought two team lawyers to the sit-down, which hinted that a deal might be reachable. Parcells, who came with Robert Fraley, disclosed that his health had factored into his change of heart, but within the first fifteen minutes of a three-hour conversation, Parcells sensed that Culverhouse, who seemed skeptical of the explanation, was no longer interested. Instead of renewing his full-court press, the owner behaved like the one being courted. To Parcells’s chagrin, the meeting ended without Culverhouse’s renewing his offer. That same afternoon the Bucs owner issued a statement that the meeting “did not provide him with the comfort level to pursue further discussions.”
In February 1992, only six weeks after his angioplasty, Parcells’s fears were realized. He started suffering chest pains, signs that his heart issues were far from over. The intermittent aches turned relentless in April, when it became evident that his artery blockage had returned, and Parcells was forced to undergo another angioplasty. Though considered minimally invasive, the procedure expanded the walls of the artery, causing bruising in the lining. When Parcells’s artery healed it generated a keloid, a kind of scar tissue, which led to restenosis, a rare condition involving the renarrowing of a blood vessel after angioplasty.
His son-in-law, Jerry Schwille, Suzy’s husband, recommended someone who specialized in heart trauma: V. Paul Addonizio, chief of cardiac surgery at Temple University Hospital. Renowned for cutting-edge surgeries while averaging two hundred operations annually, Addonizio fulfilled Parcells’s desire for a doctor “used to dealing with trauma, in case something goes wrong.” By Parcells’s reasoning, a surgeon skilled at complex heart transplants would be at relative ease with a single-vessel bypass.
Parcells’s idiosyncrasies prevented him from using the person who had operated on his father, although John Hutchinson was perhaps the top thoracic surgeon in New Jersey. In 1983, Hutchinson, who oversaw the Hackensack University Medical Center, had performed the high-risk emergency surgery on Charles Parcells just days before he died. “I’m definitely not going to that guy; I’m superstitious,” Parcells explains. “He did my dad, and that didn’t work out the way I wanted it to.”
Regardless, coronary bypass remained a last resort. In the meantime Kesselbrenner recommended that Parcells travel to the Cleveland Clinic to undergo an alternative procedure: atherectomy. “You’ve got nothing to lose, and it just might work.”
In late April 1992, on Good Friday, Parcells flew to Cleveland for a third procedure. A device was inserted into the artery and rotated to eliminate blockage. “Kind of like what the Roto-Rooter man does,” Parcells says. Although the procedure cleared the artery, its inside walls were bruised again, raising the possibility of more scar tissue. On Easter Sunday, Parcells returned to New Jersey, hoping for a new life. He adhered to a strict new diet, and no longer smoked, but only a few weeks later, in late May, the blockage returned. Parcells suffered shortness of breath and sharp pain in his chest that left him feeling like he might suffer a heart attack at any moment.
Despite having undergone several tests and three operations within six months, Parcells’s situation was worse than ever, so on May 29, 1992, he checked into Temple University Hospital for cardiac catheterization, a medical-imaging technique to reevaluate his condition and determine the need for other, more serious options. A tube was inserted into Parcells’s body and passed through the blood vessel to the heart, providing precise images of the artery blockage. The results confirmed the need for a single-vessel bypass.
Parcells could still have tried to manage the situation with medication, but the chest pains and the risk of a heart attack would have remained. Parcells consulted with his Jersey-based cardiologist, Dr. Kesselbrenner, who explained the pitfalls of avoiding bypass surgery. “This artery controls 40 percent of the blood flow from your heart. It’s 50-50 whether you’re going to live if you don’t have the surgery. And if you do live, things probably won’t be the same.”
Parcells responded, “Okay, I’ve got to have the surgery.”
He was also informed that the chance of death during single-vessel bypass was about 2 percent.
Parcells returned to Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, his thoughts full of impending surgery and the lack of a guarantee despite the great odds of surviving. In four days it would be settled one way or the other.
As a boy, Parcells scaled the spire of a local church for kicks. In high school, he was the quintessential jock, using his body with abandon. During college he entered a contest to wrestle a bear. And in the NFL, Parcells instilled fear in some of the biggest, baddest athletes on the planet. Now, for the first time, Parcells was directly confronted by his mortality. The possibility of imminent death jarred him, as Parcells considered the silver lining of succumbing during surgery. “Fortunately,” he says dryly, “I would never know it.” Preparing for the worst, he went over the family’s finances with Judy at their living-room table. He provided detailed, written instructions that included wishes beyond his will. “In that situation,” he explains, “you don’t know if you’re coming back, so it was time to set my affairs in order with my wife.”
Parcells tried to mask his disquietude from his family, assuring everyone that things would turn out fine, but he was determined to keep his daughters from seeing him immediately after the bypass, when he would be weak and connected to a ventilator. “I don’t want the girls down there,” Parcells told Judy. “Don’t bring them in until I’m sitting up.”
Late Monday morning, June 1, 1992, the couple drove to Philadelphia. The surgery was scheduled for 7 a.m. the next day. For most of the two-hour ride to Temple University Hospital, Parcells remained mute as his emotions roiled. Unhappy about the need for surgery, he had resigned himself to its inevitability. After silence in the car for several minutes, Parcells reiterated his instructions to Judy for the worst-case scenario, reminding her who to contact about the family’s finances. Despite her husband’s tough-guy exterior, she detected his angst, especially as Philadelphia neared.
Once Parcells was settled in his hospital room, the only concern he expressed to Judy involved memory loss, a risk of heart surgery. For Parcells, whose memory was preternatural, the only thing worse would be death. During a single-bypass operation, the heart is stopped to allow the creation of a new conduit for blood. In Parcells’s case, an artery under his breastbone needed to be grafted to his problematic artery to circumvent, or bypass, the blockage, and maintain proper blood supply to the heart. The blood flow would be rerouted by having one end of the clear artery grafted below the clogged section of the vessel known as the widow maker. “Someday people will probably laugh at us for doing this,” Addonizio says. “But we literally stitch the new artery to the old one.”
To halt the heart without causing death, all the blood needed to be drained from it and funneled through a tube into the heart-lung machine, which temporarily takes o
ver the functions of those organs. Dubbed “the pump,” the machine provides respiration while pumping blood throughout the body to maintain circulation and body temperature. After surgery, the heart and lungs resume their normal functions. The downside of the pump is that the longer a patient is on it the more likely it is that complications will occur. Microscopic particles inevitably reach blood vessels in the brain. And the patient may awaken from surgery having forgotten such basic facts as the name of the current president or the most recent Super Bowl–winning coach. In the worst cases, this particulate matter can cause brain damage.
“I always say, ’There’s only three kinds of heart surgeons: fast-good, fast-bad, and slow-bad,” Addonizio says. “There’s no slow-good.”
So Parcells instructed Judy to test his memory after he awoke from anesthesia by asking him his address, his birth date, and the phone number of his youngest brother, Doug.
In the late afternoon, Addonizio came to Parcells’s hospital room for a meeting in advance of surgery. With Judy present, the doctor provided his patient with a breakdown of the surgery, postsurgical treatment, timeline for his stay assuming no setbacks, and likelihood of complications. Addonizio confirmed that surgery was necessary to avoid the likelihood of a fatal heart attack. Although Parcells had considered a single-bypass operation to be less challenging than other heart surgeries, in certain respects his situation was among the most difficult. The new connection between the rejiggered arteries, called anastomosis, had to be nearly flawless. Technically it wasn’t a complex surgery, but the precision required in the linkage made the margin for error almost zero.
Addonizio offers perspective on the low probability of death during surgery. “Keep in mind that for the person who doesn’t make it,” he says, “it’s 100 percent. And 3 percent is pretty high odds compared to, say, the chances of being in a plane crash.”
Brooklyn-born in 1948, Addonizio had attended Xavier High, a private school in Manhattan, then obtained a biology degree from New York University. As a teenager Addonizio relished Big Blue’s dominance from the mid-fifties through the early sixties. His favorite Giant was quarterback Y. A. Tittle, who won the 1963 league MVP but lost the NFL Championship for the third straight year. While Addonizio trained to be a doctor, obtaining a medical degree from Cornell University in 1974, he suffered through some of the franchise’s down decades. So Parcells was larger than life to Giants fans like Addonizio for returning their team to glory.
The early 1990s was an exciting time for the heart-surgery profession, highlighted by the introduction of the artificial heart, a boon for patients awaiting transplants. Addonizio had performed hundreds of surgeries each year, including some on professional athletes. To manage his intensely pressure-filled job, Addonizio maintained some detachment. “I’m not one of these I-feel-your-pain type of people,” says Addonizio, who encourages his staff to lend emotional support. “My job is to do the best I possibly can for the patient.”
Therefore, Addonizio failed to detect Parcells’s apprehension preceding the bypass. Instead, the doctor was struck by his patient’s take-charge mannerism, even in his vulnerable position. With a polite yet booming voice, he asked several incisive questions. Despite the fact that Parcells was talking to the man who would hold his heart in hand, he remained the dominant presence in the room.
“Now, this may seem a bit strange, but the first impression I had was that this was an extraordinarily attractive man,” Addonizio recalls. “This is a real man’s man, like in the style of, say, a John Wayne. The second impression was that this fellow has tremendous leadership ability. It’s not something I can define, but it’s something you sense when you’re in the presence of certain people.
“It’s not as if he was ever mean or demanding. He was a model patient, believe it or not. You would think somebody who’s forceful enough to control L.T. would be difficult.”
Just before his early-morning surgery, Parcells took a shower to minimize the chances of infection, a significant concern for heart-surgery patients. He was assigned a number, a plastic cap, and a loose gown not designed for privacy. Although Parcells had taken a sedative, his anxiety soared as he was placed on a gurney to be transported to the waiting area of the operating room. The intern handling the gurney turned out to be a player on Temple’s football team. And Parcells couldn’t resist sizing up his physique, noting the similarities to some of his ex-Giants. Just before strapping Parcells on the gurney, the college student produced a football, a pen, and a sheet of paper.
“Hey, Coach, would you mind signing these for my brother?”
Amused by the timing of the request, Parcells took the pigskin. “Well, if I don’t make it out of here, you’re going to have the last ball I ever signed. You’re going to sell that sonofabitch, aren’t you?”
The intern curled his right hand into a fist and tapped the side of the gurney. “Don’t worry, Coach, I’ll be there when you come out!”
His conviction boosted Parcells’s confidence. The famous patient autographed the football and the paper, signing off with, “Good luck.” As Parcells was wheeled down the hallway, his gaze largely limited to the banks of fluorescent lights on the ceiling, he wondered if this would be among his final sights. Parcells strained his head sideways, hoping to catch a glimpse of a window to the outside world, but all he could see were brick walls going by. “I was in a bit of a mental battle,” he recalls.
Oblivious to his patient’s state of mind, the intern moved Parcells along briskly, but when he noticed Parcells craning his neck, he slowed down. Finally, a few yards from their destination Parcells got lucky, spotting a window through an open door that revealed an oak tree, lush with June foliage.
Parcells smiled.
When he entered the OR waiting area, two other patients were waiting on gurneys. One was a policeman from Cinnaminson, New Jersey, an eastern suburb of Philadelphia. Recognizing Parcells, the cop initiated a conversation, revealing that this was his second surgery for a cancerous brain tumor. Ex-coach and cop commiserated for a few minutes until the wall clock registered 7 a.m. Surgery time. The policeman was moved through one door as Parcells was wheeled through another, which opened into a room so vast it looked like a football field, brightly lit for a night game.
Doctor Addonizio had granted his patient’s request to bring an elephant figurine into the operation room, which was strapped to Parcells’s right ankle. With the trunk curled up, the figurine’s head pointed toward the exit door for luck. Parcells owned hundreds of elephant statuettes, sent over the years by fans, including President Nixon, who had learned of the coach’s superstition from newspaper articles. But the green-tinted figurine in the operating room was his original and most cherished: Ida’s going-away gift in 1959 when her eldest son left home to attend college. Before the surgery, he maximized his chances for success by placing a scapular, the small religious talisman worn by Catholics, on the elephant statuette. “You don’t want to tempt fate,” he explains, chuckling.
Parcells was in the operating room for less than a minute before the anesthesiologist administered medicine through an IV, causing him to relax before drifting into deep slumber. Soon, an electric buzz saw cut open the front of his chest, making an in-line, vertical incision the length of half his breastbone. The cut sternum was pushed open for access to his heart. Meanwhile, Parcells was connected to the heart-lung machine with a plastic tube to keep his blood circulating while his heart was clinically arrested. In performing thousands of such operations, Addonizio’s team had honed its efficiency, skill, and synchronicity. With Addonizio as quarterback, the goal was a successful surgery as speedily as possible. His team considered it a failure to utter a word or, well, an audible, during surgery.
Parcells’s operation took twelve minutes of dead silence; it was “fast-good.”
Despite performing countless such surgeries, Addonizio says of Parcells’s bypass, “I remember his arteries precisely, and the details of the operation—every thought that we had as
each stitch was going in [his heart]. That’s how important it was to get every little stitch perfect.”
As the anesthesia wore off during the late afternoon, Parcells regained consciousness in an ICU room. He could feel the tube in the back of his throat that wound down to the ventilator. Pain radiated from his breastbone, but Parcells’s first acute sense was auditory. He heard beeping nearby, plus some distant noises, perhaps voices, which he couldn’t identify. He had no memory of the surgery, and wasn’t sure if it was over. “I just knew I was alive,” he says.
When the nurse assigned to Parcells noticed that he was stirring, she rushed to his side. First she had good news: the surgery was successful. Parcells could expect to be hospitalized for a week, during which time, she assured Parcells, he would receive plenty of help recuperating. Nonetheless, the next several hours were difficult, particularly for a control freak. Parcells needed assistance with even the most basic functions. When Judy visited her husband and saw his condition, she decided to hold off on his memory test for at least another day.
Shortly after surgery, patients often feel depressed. Their sense of vulnerability is heightened, and the long road to rehabilitation hits home. “This is more common for men than women,” Addonizio says, “because most of us tend to think of ourselves as immortal. Being in the hospital is not as foreign to women.” Although Bill Parcells was grateful to be alive, his feeble state made him despondent. He wondered if he would ever recover enough to coach again.
He was less downcast the next day after being disconnected from the ventilator and allowed to return to his hospital bedroom. When Judy conducted the memory test, he was thrilled to find that his recall was intact. The fifty-year-old coach was also delighted to hear Addonizio describe his heart as young and athletic.
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