Read Online My Next Step by Dave Liniger - Free Book Online

was feeling. Whenever Dr. Barry Molk came into my room, I’d open my eyes very wide, as if to say I felt good, safe and secure with him there. When the doctors and nurses were discussing something about my treatment I didn’t agree with, I’d give a certain look that let Junior, Mary or anyone else who knew me well know that I wasn’t going for it.
    DR. BARRY MOLK
    Dave’s doctors were contemplating doing tracheo-plasty on him right around the time he had his cardiac arrest. When I spoke to him about it, his eyes kept getting wider and wider and his breathing started getting harder and harder. He experienced all of the signs I’d expect to see from someone about to have a panic attack. He’d calm down for a minute, and then he’d widen his eyes again. I could tell his eyes were shouting, “NO!” He couldn’t talk, but he was definitely communicating that he wasn’t happy with what he was hearing, as tears welled up in his eyes.
    After the results of my MRI came back, Dr. Prusmack explained that my situation had become dire. Although I had been responding to the antibiotics, the infection along my spine was still very invasive. The only way to save my life was to operate along my spinal cord and spinal nerve to remove the infection. It’s a delicate procedure because he would have to scrape my spinal cord and nerves with a scalpel to remove the sacks of pus. There was no margin for error. He was somber as he described the horrific situation to my family and friends. He wouldn’t promise anything positive, as he knew this would be a Herculean effort to save my life.
    The anesthesiologist for the surgery was there too. He reiterated that although the surgery was risky, the medical instability of my failing organs made it even worse. They needed to drain the sacks of pus that had attached to my spine to relieve the pressure in my back, which was likely causing my paralysis. If they didn’t, chances were, I’d be paralyzed for life. In all likelihood, they could eliminate some of the staph, but they would probably never get rid of all of it.
    “What if you don’t operate?” someone asked.
    “He is going to die.” Both doctors confirmed their worst fear.
    Having just come through a heart scare, my family and friends huddled together as a group to make a decision about this latest news, since I was in no condition to do it myself—and they knew they had to make it fast.
    JUNIOR
    The only time we ever wavered in a decision as a group was when the doctors were contemplating putting a trachea tube in dad. We were worried about putting the tube in before dad’s surgery. Some decisions in the ICU have to be made quickly on the fly, while others allow for a little time. This was one of those decisions. There was something telling each of us not to do the surgery now but we knew that scar tissue can form in the trachea that could cause permanent damage to his throat and ability to speak. We got them to hold off for a couple of days, but we knew it was down to the wire.
    The doctors were planning to do my tracheotomy on February 15 th , the day before they wanted to schedule my back surgery. I overheard a conversation between the nurses and doctors in my room about moving the time of that procedure from 5:00 PM to 1:00 PM. The doctor was suggesting they ought to do the procedure earlier that day because Dr. Prusmack was scheduled to do his operation the following day and they wanted to give me a slightly broader window to recover before going under the knife again with Prusmack. I hadn’t uttered a word since the tubes had come out from my cardiac arrest. It’s not that I didn’t want to, I simply couldn’t because they had reinserted the ventilator tube down my throat, which was now extremely raw, sore and very uncomfortable. As the dialogue continued in my presence, my daughter Mary turned toward me and noticed I was crying. That’s when everyone was certain that I didn’t want the tracheotomy. I knew it meant