I had gone to Europe in 1972 with the first Euroterm from Eastern Mennonite College (now University) under the leadership of Dr. Al Keim. When the rest of the Eastern Mennonite group returned to the U.S. in April, 1973, I elected to stay on in Paris.
While there, I received a letter from Mom saying that Dad had had a mild heart attack and was in the hospital. Ever the dutiful son, I returned home immediately. I finished up the few electrical jobs Dad had pending and then, because there was no work in Port Allegany, moved to Lancaster County.
After a week or so at a new job, I strained my back rather badly and was hospitalized in Lancaster for nearly three weeks. Dad had made arrangements to consult some heart specialists at Hershey Medical Center, but instead of going straight to Hershey, he and Mom came by where I was staying, saw the condition I was in, and took me to the hospital in Lancaster. After I was admitted, they went on to Hershey, where Dad was admitted and had a coronary bypass graft done.
My recuperation from my back injury was slow but unremarkable; Dad never really recuperated from his bypass surgery. He had repeated complications, starting with an infection in the incision. He was taken to the OR for a debridement, which is the removing of the dead tissue so that the wound can heal. While they were cleaning the wound, they discovered the hard way that the infection had invaded his aorta: it popped. Had he been anywhere else in the hospital but the operating room, he would have died on the spot.
While recovering from the debridement and aortic rupture, he again experienced heavy hemorrhaging through the incision. This time, it was determined that at least one of his grafts had adhered to the chest wall and torn loose, with the possibility of damage to other grafts as well. And by now, he was too weak to undergo another surgery to attempt to repair the grafts. In essence, he was now worse off than he was before the initial graft had been attempted.
At that time, next to nothing was known about the clinical depression that is now understood to be the frequent and life-deadening companion of coronary bypass graft surgery. Dad became deeply depressed. His body slowly healed as much as it could, but his health as a whole was never what it was before the bypass graft was attempted. His strength and spirits remained poor; he was hospitalized repeatedly for angina and more heart attacks.
His health deteriorated until he couldn’t preach any more, and in 1975, he resigned as pastor of Birch Grove, which hurt him even more deeply. It was around this time that he made these tapes. In 1978, he finally found a heart surgeon who was willing to risk redoing the failed bypass graft.
The surgery took place on the morning of March 2, 1978, but once the graft was complete, his heart would not be restarted. So, in many ways, Dad died of a broken heart. He was buried in Annin Creek Cemetery, not far from the church, the land, and the people he had come to love so much.
 |
| Alvin E. Miller 1913-1978 Annin Creek Cemetery Turtlepoint, PA |
No comments:
Post a Comment