Word: nolens
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Though thousands of middle-aged victims of heart disease have undergone such operations in the past decade, this was no ordinary patient. He was William A. Nolen, M.D., author of the 1970 bestseller The Making of a Surgeon, a startlingly candid behind-the-scenes account of his surgical apprenticeship at New York's Bellevue Hospital, and other popular books. Not one to miss an opportunity to publish, the articulate Litchfield, Minn., surgeon has now made the most of his unfamiliar position at the other end of the scalpel. In a new book titled Surgeon Under the Knife (Coward, McCann...
...always, Nolen is refreshingly candid. He admits that he foolishly refused to take his first chest pains "seriously-though he had a history of high blood pressure, and his father died at 58 of heart disease. After an electrocardiogram finally confirmed that the pain was angina-a condition caused by an inadequate flow of blood to the heart muscles-an immediate concern, he allows, was whether he would be able to keep up an active sex life...
...recalls, for example, that his original cardiologist in Minneapolis carelessly neglected to look at his EKG for six days. Then, when he finally did, he abruptly announced that if delicate heart X rays he was about to take confirmed his suspicions, Nolen might have to undergo surgery the very next day. Refusing to be stampeded, Nolen left Minneapolis and headed for Boston's famed Massachusetts General Hospital to get another medical opinion...
Electric Shock. It was a defiantly wise decision-one, Nolen concedes, a layman might have been too timid to make. At Massachusetts General, he learned that his problem was arteriosclerosis; a buildup of fatty deposits was obstructing two of the three coronary arteries. The suggested remedy: an operation that heart surgeons humorously call "a double cabbage"-from the acronym CAB (for coronary artery bypass). Though more than 90% of the patients who undergo such operations survive at least five years, Nolen knew that any heart surgery posed grave risks. While the surgeons do their work, the heartbeat must be stopped...
...Nolen's operation went without a hitch. Awakening in the recovery room four hours later, he found himself in a tangle of tubes and wires. Almost every bodily function was being monitored or controlled. To ensure adequate oxygen for his heart, he was hooked to a respirator. If he tried to move, he felt a sharp chest pain (from the break that was made in his breastbone to get at his heart). Later, as he listened to the beep-beeps of heart monitors echoing through the corridor, he nervously wondered whether any change in their steady rhythm was coming...