G is not my natural born child. I came into his 16 year old life when he was rebellious and brutal, spitting anger, and giving no fucks. He terrified and challenged me in ways I didn’t want to explore. My own kids were younger, and I felt like they were slipping away from me, that they were irreconcilably damaged, like their dad and me. G was so wounded.
Over the years he was in and out of our house and our lives. He was an addict- teenage drinking having given way to opioid addiction. Pills at first, and then heroin. His father stayed in there, and I, well, I found a way to manage. I took a job, and then an apartment in the Bay- thrilled to be back in the city after so very long in rural Northern California. I’d go home on weekends, bringing the best produce from the market in my neighborhood, and natural wine from that great little shop, and make them fabulous dinners on the weekend. And then I’d leave. It was how I could stay- by being able to leave.
One day I was on my way back to Berkeley, and G asked for a ride to a class at community college. Despite his addiction, he kept trying at school, though most of the time, he would drop out. He asked me to pull over and began to throw up on the side of the road, remarking when it was over how weird it was and that he’d just been to the clinic and they had given him some antibiotics for a bug that just didn’t seem to go away- it was one of those winter’s where there was a lot of flu going around. I talked to his dad, and we both agreed that clinic really wasn’t very good and he should go to urgent care if he didn’t feel better over the next few days.
I came home on Thursday and went to have tea with an old friend when suddenly I got up and said I had to go. G had taken himself to the emergency room, and I had a distinct sense that I had to go there. I got in the car and he called me, asking if I knew where his dad was- he wasn’t answering his phone. He said,
“They are saying there’s something wrong with my heart. I don’t know what’s going on.” And I said,
“I’m on my way. I’ll be right there.”
The diagnosis came a week later, as he was lying in the hospital bed, suffering from withdrawals. Acute left-ventricular cardiomyopathy. His heart was broken. He would eventually need a heart transplant, although the doctor at that point could not say when. Nor could he say why. Sometimes it happens that way- you get sick and it goes straight to your heart. We left in disbelief, with a referral to Stanford.
He was dying. He had just turned 26.
I’d like to say that he was able to turn it around right there and quit the drugs, and dedicate himself to getting healthy. That would be a different story- and one that is not ours. The next few years were difficult.
How can you comprehend this happening to you as a young person who already feels the world is against you? And then we learned it was genetic, and that it came from his mother’s side of the family, from whom he was estranged, and that his sisters both also carried the gene. And he cannot stop trying to ease the pain. I could not blame him, but nor could I save him. And my husband is trying so hard to stay in this, he is trying so hard and we are trying so hard and yet it is his son, his beautiful son, and I am lost for words, for comfort. Somehow we all go on.
Early one morning, G got in his car and drove a few miles before falling asleep at the wheel and veered into a piece of construction equipment on the side of the road. His injuries were serious but not life threatening. What was life threatening had been there all along. And that was the turning point. He reached out to his doctor at Stanford, and she told him she believed in him and set him up with therapy and and a methadone clinic.
Less than years later, his heart was deteriorating rapidly. On a check up visit, Dr. P told him it was time- that he had a week to go home and get his things in order, and should be back within a week to be admitted for a procedure where he would remain in the hospital until a donor heart was found. We drove home in silence.
The next week, G laid hooked up to a machine, waiting for someone else to die. It needs to be someone young and tall, so they have a big heart, like his. His father and I find ourselves having a synchronistic panic attack one afternoon. He is an acupuncturist and suggests we try breathing together. We lay on the bed of the Palo Alto hotel, close our eyes, and hold each other’s hand, taking breaths in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
hold 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
out 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Repeat. You can hear your heartbeat syncing to your partners. You can feel it through the thin skin of the wrist.
A week later, G received a heart transplant. We imagine we heard the helicopter thumping overhead when we got the call. A good heart, a young heart from Seattle. The surgery is scheduled. We are eating down by the pool with his mother because we can’t hang out anywhere else and it feels like we should be together. We can’t be at the hospital because of COVID. We put the nurse on speaker phone.
It went really well, she says. I hug his mother, we are all crying. We are laughing. We are crying, we are laughing.
There’s a lot more to write about this story, but it is late and I must stop. For anyone who is reading this, It’s been a year and a half since the transplant. G is at university, studying organic chemistry. He has a dog. And a big heart.
— Cristine
Over the years he was in and out of our house and our lives. He was an addict- teenage drinking having given way to opioid addiction. Pills at first, and then heroin. His father stayed in there, and I, well, I found a way to manage. I took a job, and then an apartment in the Bay- thrilled to be back in the city after so very long in rural Northern California. I’d go home on weekends, bringing the best produce from the market in my neighborhood, and natural wine from that great little shop, and make them fabulous dinners on the weekend. And then I’d leave. It was how I could stay- by being able to leave.
One day I was on my way back to Berkeley, and G asked for a ride to a class at community college. Despite his addiction, he kept trying at school, though most of the time, he would drop out. He asked me to pull over and began to throw up on the side of the road, remarking when it was over how weird it was and that he’d just been to the clinic and they had given him some antibiotics for a bug that just didn’t seem to go away- it was one of those winter’s where there was a lot of flu going around. I talked to his dad, and we both agreed that clinic really wasn’t very good and he should go to urgent care if he didn’t feel better over the next few days.
I came home on Thursday and went to have tea with an old friend when suddenly I got up and said I had to go. G had taken himself to the emergency room, and I had a distinct sense that I had to go there. I got in the car and he called me, asking if I knew where his dad was- he wasn’t answering his phone. He said,
“They are saying there’s something wrong with my heart. I don’t know what’s going on.” And I said,
“I’m on my way. I’ll be right there.”
The diagnosis came a week later, as he was lying in the hospital bed, suffering from withdrawals. Acute left-ventricular cardiomyopathy. His heart was broken. He would eventually need a heart transplant, although the doctor at that point could not say when. Nor could he say why. Sometimes it happens that way- you get sick and it goes straight to your heart. We left in disbelief, with a referral to Stanford.
He was dying. He had just turned 26.
I’d like to say that he was able to turn it around right there and quit the drugs, and dedicate himself to getting healthy. That would be a different story- and one that is not ours. The next few years were difficult.
How can you comprehend this happening to you as a young person who already feels the world is against you? And then we learned it was genetic, and that it came from his mother’s side of the family, from whom he was estranged, and that his sisters both also carried the gene. And he cannot stop trying to ease the pain. I could not blame him, but nor could I save him. And my husband is trying so hard to stay in this, he is trying so hard and we are trying so hard and yet it is his son, his beautiful son, and I am lost for words, for comfort. Somehow we all go on.
Early one morning, G got in his car and drove a few miles before falling asleep at the wheel and veered into a piece of construction equipment on the side of the road. His injuries were serious but not life threatening. What was life threatening had been there all along. And that was the turning point. He reached out to his doctor at Stanford, and she told him she believed in him and set him up with therapy and and a methadone clinic.
Less than years later, his heart was deteriorating rapidly. On a check up visit, Dr. P told him it was time- that he had a week to go home and get his things in order, and should be back within a week to be admitted for a procedure where he would remain in the hospital until a donor heart was found. We drove home in silence.
The next week, G laid hooked up to a machine, waiting for someone else to die. It needs to be someone young and tall, so they have a big heart, like his. His father and I find ourselves having a synchronistic panic attack one afternoon. He is an acupuncturist and suggests we try breathing together. We lay on the bed of the Palo Alto hotel, close our eyes, and hold each other’s hand, taking breaths in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
hold 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
out 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Repeat. You can hear your heartbeat syncing to your partners. You can feel it through the thin skin of the wrist.
A week later, G received a heart transplant. We imagine we heard the helicopter thumping overhead when we got the call. A good heart, a young heart from Seattle. The surgery is scheduled. We are eating down by the pool with his mother because we can’t hang out anywhere else and it feels like we should be together. We can’t be at the hospital because of COVID. We put the nurse on speaker phone.
It went really well, she says. I hug his mother, we are all crying. We are laughing. We are crying, we are laughing.
There’s a lot more to write about this story, but it is late and I must stop. For anyone who is reading this, It’s been a year and a half since the transplant. G is at university, studying organic chemistry. He has a dog. And a big heart.
— Cristine
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