by Isaac Asimov
Over the Labor Day weekend, I went to the World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore. On September 4, 1983, Foundation’s Edge won the Hugo by a narrow margin, despite competition from both Heinlein and Clarke. It was my fifth Hugo.
What made the convention most memorable for me, however, was that it was spread over two adjacent hotels, so that we had to travel from one to another constantly over walkways, and I had the greatest difficulty in managing it.
On September 12, I spent some time with George Abell, the astronomer, whom I had met on earlier occasions through Carl Sagan. He was a very intelligent man and very friendly. He was younger than I and seemed absolutely fit, for he kept up a regime of exercise and he lacked any sign of a potbelly.
I thought of my own sedentary and flabby life, and of my increasing martyrdom to angina, and I suppose I would have felt envy if it weren’t that I was well aware that my condition was my own fault in that it was the result of a lifetime of dietary and sedentary abuse. I had no right to indulge in envy. Nor need I have done so, for on October 7, poor George died of a heart attack and I lived on. He was only fifty-seven, the age of my heart attack.
On September 18, I attended “New York Is Book Country,” the annual book-promoting extravaganza along a temporarily closed Fifth Avenue. Robyn showed up with two of her friends and we all went afterward to have dinner. However, I had to beg them all to slow down and creep along, for I could not walk any faster. That was more embarrassment for me, I’m afraid, to say nothing of my concern over the fact that I was clearly frightening Robyn.
By September 24, I actually mentioned my angina in my diary.
Life went on, however, and I even continued to pretend I was well. I kept up my drumfire of lectures, traveling to Connecticut, and to Boston (to give one last talk for the medical school on October 3, 1983), and even as far as Newport News, Virginia.
On September 23,1 met Indira Gandhi at a meeting she requested with a number of authors, and we gave her some books. She was a gracious, intelligent woman.
On September 28, I attended a fund-raiser for libraries, and onstage, as part of the entertainment, Richard Kiley recited Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” Toward the end he was stuck for a line, and after a few seconds of agonizing uncertainty on my part as to what I was to do, I shouted the line at him. (I had memorized all eighteen stanzas of the poem in grade school, and I don’t forget things.) He continued and I tried to sink into my seat thereafter in order to escape notice, but it was too late. The toastmaster had recognized me and quickly announced who “the prompter” had been.
But on October 17, 1983, on my monthly visit to Paul Esserman, I finally broke down and actually admitted to a doctor that I was having anginal problems. I tried to make light of it, but Paul would have nothing of that. Frowning, he called a cardiologist named Peter Pasternack and made an appointment for me.
On October 21, I therefore met with Peter Pasternack and he refused to make light of my angina either. He set up an appointment for a stress test for me. I began to use nitroglycerine patches for relief, but they didn’t help much. On October 22, Marty Greenberg andwalked from my apartment to the hotel where the Bouchercon (a mystery convention) was being held. It was only half a mile but I had to stop three times in clear agony. Again I was embarrassed, and also concerned over the fright I was giving Marty.
On October 25, Janet brought a semisweet chocolate female leg (nearly life-sized, but hollow) to the Dutch Treat meeting. It had been given to me by Doubleday as a publication-day present, and Janet was not going to let me eat it all by myself. The club accepted it gladly and had it broken up so that everyone (including me) could get a piece or two for dessert. I expected that Janet, after making the delivery, would be more or less politely ushered out of what was after all a stag meeting, but she wasn’t. In gratitude for the gift, she was seated at the head table (while I sat at the usual Jewish table) and they made much of her.
On October 26, I had my stress test and I failed it with flying colors. An isotope picture of my heart was taken and it clearly showed that my coronaries were badly blocked. In my diary for that day I recorded that 1983 was on its way to being far and away my best year as far as income was concerned, but, alas, “I don’t expect to long survive it.”
Yet life goes on, and even at this crisis I made a trip to Philadelphia to give a talk. On the other hand, I was cautious enough to prepare a new will on November 4.
On November 14,1 went to University Hospital for an angiogram. The coronary blockage was pronounced, but still not so bad as to deprive me of what Peter Pasternack called “options.” I could have a triple bypass operation or I could choose to live on nitroglycerine tablets and perhaps live out a normal lifetime without an operation, but I’d be more or less a “cardiac cripple.”
I said, “What are the chances of dying on the operating table, Peter?”
He said, “About one in a hundred. That counts everyone, however —very old people, people who are suffering emergencies, people who have bad hearts. In your case, the odds would be considerably better.”
“And what do you suppose my chances are of dying within a year if I don’t have an operation?”
“My guess,” said Peter, “is one in six.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll have the operation.”
So Peter made an appointment for me with a surgeon.
(I ought to have started a new novel by now, but I refused to do so until I knew for sure that I would live long enough to finish it. I was not going to leave an unfinished novel behind me, as Charles Dickens did, if I could help it. That was why there was a one-year gap before Robots cmd Empire was published. However, I didn’t loaf. I was working madly those months on the revision of the Guide to Science, hoping to complete a fourth edition before I died.)
On November 29, I went to see Steven Colvin, a young, thin, hyperactive person who was totally dedicated to his work and was, perhaps, the best open-heart surgeon in the world.
Peter had told me this, and, as a testimonial to Colvin’s worth, Peter went on to say that his own mother had been operated on by Colvin the year before. I thought about that and then asked a question designed to close an obvious gap in the logic.
“Do you love your mother, Peter?” I asked. And Peter replied, “Very much!” with such sincerity that I felt I could safely put myself in Colvin’s hands. Colvin, after examining me, asked if I wanted to wait till after Christmas-New Year’s for the operation.
Actually, I had a reason to wait, for I wanted to attend the annual banquet of the Baker Street Irregulars on January 6. I was preparing a song to be sung to the tune of “Danny Boy” and I wanted desperately to deliver it.
However, I dared not take a chance. I said, “No, Dr. Colvin, I want the operation at the earliest possible date.”
So it was set for December 14, 1983.
I completed the song, sang it into a cassette, and told Janet that she must deliver it to the BSI if I couldn’t make it. The prospect of the operation didn’t make for a happy tenth wedding anniversary for us when it came the day after my interview with Colvin.
To add to the unhappiness, Sally Greenberg, Marty’s dear wife, was also entering the hospital. She had cancer of the kidney and was worse off than I was.
A few days before I was due for the operation, I forgot my condition, and because I was having trouble getting a taxi, I ran for one that finally stopped at a red light. My intention was to get it before someone else did and before it drove away.
The flow of adrenaline kept me going, but after I got into the cab, announced my destination, and settled back, the adrenaline stopped and my heart, unable to get the oxygen it needed, yelled at the top of its voice. I had the worst anginal attack ever, and as I clutched at my chest and gasped for breath, I decided that this was it. I was going to have a second attack and this time it would kill me.
It seemed to me that the driver would reach Doubleday, where I was heading, and find he had a
dead man in his cab. Unwilling to go through the red tape of reporting me (so it seemed in my imagination), he would continue his drive, taking me to the East River, tumble me into it, and drive away—leaving Janet to go into a frenzy when I never came home.
I reached for my pad to write my name and address on it in large letters, with directions for calling Janet’s number, but as I was about to do so, I felt the pain ebbing and when we got to Doubleday I was normal. —I was badly shaken, of course.
What Stan had told me at the time of my thyroid operation, eleven years earlier, was true. When you are driven by pain, you are not afraid of operations. I could hardly wait for the bypass after this experience.
On Monday, December 12, 1983, I entered the hospital. While there, the anesthesiologist told me the nature of the operation. I asked how a bypass could be made, since obviously a hole would have to be drilled in the aorta and I would bleed to death at once.
“Oh,” he said, “we stop the heart.”
I turned green. “That gives me five minutes to live.”
“No, no. You’ll be in a heart-lung machine that will keep the blood circulating and you breathing.” “What if the power shuts off?” “We’ve got an emergency generator.” “What if my heart won’t start again?” “It will insist on it. The difficulty is keeping it from starting before
we are ready.”
I brooded about it and asked to see Paul Esserman. “Paul,” I said, “I’m embarrassed to say this to the anesthesiologist because he’ll think I’m crazy, but you’ll understand. Listen, I must have plenty of oxygen for my brain. I can’t afford any shortage that will dim it even slightly. I don’t care what happens to my body, within reason, but my brain mustn’t be in any way disadvantaged. You’ll have to explain to everybody involved in the operation that I have an unusual brain that must be protected.”
Paul nodded. “I understand, Isaac, and I promise I’ll make them understand it too. And I’ll test you afterward.”
(Years later the New York Times ran an article stating that investigation had shown that one in five people subjected to a heart-lung machine suffered some sort of brain damage, not necessarily serious. Paul and Peter both remembered my insistence on plenty of oxygen and both admitted that I had been perfectly right to do so. As it happened, I suffered no brain damage—something I can be sure of because my writing continued undisturbed.)
On the afternoon of the fourteenth, I was wheeled to the elevators and my last words to Janet were: “Remember, if anything happens to me, I have a $75,000 advance for a new novel that you will have to return to Doubleday.”
(When it was all over, I told Doubleday this, to impress them with the fact that I had no intention of taking money from them for a book I couldn’t do. And they replied, as I might have guessed, with the old refrain: “Don’t be silly, Isaac. We wouldn’t have accepted the money.”)
I had been filled with sedatives and I remember nothing at all after I got into the elevator. I was told afterward, however, that I wouldn’t let the operation begin until I had sung a song.
“A song?” I said in surprise. “What song?” “I don’t know,” said my informant. “Something about Sherlock Holmes.”
Obviously my parody for the BSI was much in my mind. In fact, the evening before my operation, I indulged in an involuntary daydream. I had died on the operating table in my reverie, and Janet, all in black, came to the BSI to deliver the cassette.
“My late husband,” she would say, brokenly and in tears, “with the BSI in his last thoughts, asked me to deliver this.”
And they would play my parody to the tune of “Danny Boy.” The first few lines were:
Oh, Sherlock Holmes, the Baker Street Irregulars
Are gathered here to honor you today,
For in their hearts you glitter like a thousand stars,
And like the stars, you’ll never fade away.
The song would be played and I knew that the audience would be in tears and that when it was done they would stand and applaud and applaud and applaud for twenty minutes. And, in my reverie, I lis tened to all twenty minutes of the applause, and my eyes filled with tears of happiness.
Then I had the operation and the next thing I knew I was opening my eyes and I realized that I was in the recovery room. I had survived. And my first thought was that now I wouldn’t get the kind of ap plause I would have gotten if I had been dead. “Oh [expletive deleted],” I said in disappointment. I have always thought of that moment as the ultimate testimony to the ultimate ham that I was—for I was regretting I had survived because it meant I had lost my applause.
Afterward, Paul told me he had waited after the operation till I opened my eyes and recognized him. I don’t remember that, because for a while I kept swimming in and out of consciousness and I remem ber nothing till consciousness was complete.
I said, in a moment of semi-consciousness, “Hello, Paul.” Paul leaned over, anxious to test the condition of my brain. “Make me up a limerick, Isaac,” he said.
I blinked at him, then said slowly:
There was an old doctor named Paul With a penis exceedingly small—
And Paul said austerely, “That’s enough, Isaac. You pass.”
Once the day dawned, a kindly nurse brought me a New York Times and I lay there in the recovery room reading it. Considering that I had had no certain assurance that I would live to see a December 15, 1983, the fact that I was reading a newspaper for that day filled me with elation. I was alive!
A doctor passed, stared at me, and said, “What are you doing?”
I looked up in surprise. “Reading the Times.”
“In the recovery room?”
“Why not? Reading it won’t stop me from recovering.”
He walked away, shaking his head. Apparently, patients are not supposed to do anything in the recovery room but lie there in a semicomatose stupor. Colvin came to see me. I said to him, “Dr. Colvin, Paul Esserman tells me the operation was a success.”
“A success?” said Colvin contemptuously. “It was perfect.”
As it turned out, one of my mammary arteries proved to be in excellent shape and it was used for bypassing the largest coronary. A vein from my left leg was used for the other two. The artery can stand much more bashing than a vein can, so the arterial bypass of the main artery was a good thing and left me in that much better shape.
In a way, that was only the beginning, of course. I had to remain in the hospital for two more weeks or so to continue the recovery. It helped to have funds, I can tell you. The harassed nursing staff at the hospital could not begin to give me the land of care I needed, so Janet simply arranged to have private nurses stay with me on a twenty-four
hour basis, each on an eight-hour shift.
All, I might say, were delightful.
I couldn’t have any solid food for days and days, because they were
waiting for the excess albumin in my urine to disappear. (The heart-lung machine is hard on the kidneys, and mine have been at less than 100 percent efficiency ever since—though I didn’t realize this till long afterward. No one bothered telling me. However, this is not something I can complain about. The kidney condition is not immediately life-threatening and the coronary condition that was cured by the operation was.)
So I lived on soup and Jell-O for days and grew to hate that diet. When the albumin finally receded to a tolerable level, my nurse (a very pretty one who was nursing while waiting for her break in show business) brought me a sandwich of minced chicken on store-bought white bread. In the ordinary way of living, I wouldn’t have spit on such a sandwich, but this time I fell on it like a wolf on a lamb chop, chewed it up with the greatest of avidity, then fell back in my bed with a sigh of pleasure and said to the nurse, “Please give my compliments to the chef.”
I finally got out of the hospital on December 31, 1983, and could watch the New Year’s fireworks in the park from my apartment window. Not only that, but on January 2 I was able to creep to Shu
n Lee (our local, and excellent, Chinese restaurant) and celebrate my sixty-fourth birthday in the traditional manner with the del Reys, and with Robyn present as an added bonus.
But January 6 was coming, and I plagued Peter Pasternack for permission to attend the Baker Street Irregulars banquet. He finally gave in and said, “If the temperature is above freezing and if there is no precipitation.”
It seemed unlikely, for we had just lived through one of the coldest Decembers on record while I was in the hospital. Lady Fortune smiled at me, however. The evening of January 6, 1984, saw the temperature at 40 degrees and, while cloudy, there was no precipitation. We got into a taxi, told the driver we’d double his tip if he drove slowly (I was in no condition to withstand even a minor collision), and arrived at the banquet during intermission.
Everyone flocked about me to tell me how wonderful I looked (a sure sign that I looked terrible, indeed) and I sang my song rather hoarsely, for I’d had a tube down my throat for six hours while I was on the operating table. I got the applause, but it was only for two minutes, not twenty. There are disadvantages to being alive.
It was important for me to stay home and rest for a while, although, to my relief, it turned out that taking care of my accumulated mail and writing my books was not considered to be strenuous work. (Not physically, anyway.)
That was a great break for me because I had gone into the hospital with the last chapter of the Guide to Science not yet revised. I managed to finish it and brought it in personally to Basic Books (now part of the Harper & Row conglomerate) on January 17, 1984, and listened to everyone tell me how great I looked. The fourth edition, Asimov’s New Guide to Science, was published later that year.
I was left with two physical pieces of disturbance. My voice continued hoarse, and after a while I began to think of cancer of the throat. I said to Janet, “If I’ve managed to live through a triple bypass and survived just to get cancer of the throat, I shall be seriously annoyed.”