Be Compassionate

I had a patient a number of years ago in my career as a heart surgeon who was 101 years old. He lived on a small farm in Port Townsend, WA, on the other side of Puget Sound from Seattle, with his 96-year-old wife. This fellow, George Crosby, kept up his farm work, which included looking after some cattle and tending a stand of fruit trees and a bean field, until he had so much trouble breathing that he had to be admitted to the hospital. He was in the hospital’s intensive care unit when I met him undergoing treatment for congestive heart failure caused by severe aortic stenosis. His aortic valve had become extremely thickened and scarred, blocking the flow of blood out of his heart. With blood backing up into his lungs, he was now unable to breathe comfortably even with continuous intravenous medications and oxygen. Despite his advanced age I agreed to perform open heart surgery on him and replace the valve. This was the only way he would be able to leave the hospital, alive. Some of my medical colleagues argued that this patient was too old to undergo heart surgery and that he shouldn’t have it. To their surprise, however, this indomitable centenarian came through his aortic valve replacement without any trouble. He left the intensive care two days after his operation. On the 3rd postop day, asked how he was feeling as he walked down the hall unaided, George replied, “I’m not tip top.” He made a smooth, uncomplicated recovery and was discharged from the hospital eight days later. Six weeks later he resumed all his farm chores with renewed vigor.

Awed and inspired by his incredible resilience and spirit, I asked George Crosby to please tell me, if he could, how he had done it. How had he been able to maintain such good health that would enable him to withstand open heart surgery at his age? Without missing a beat, George told me that his philosophy of life was this: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—and do it first.” He accepted life as it is and was not given to judgmental thinking. He did not harbor regrets for the past or concerns about the future. He lived in the eternal present. He said that he had wanted to be an engineer but his father put him out to work after the eighth grade, and he worked contentedly at a Pacific Northwest lumber mill. He was quick to forgive but, as his wife later told me, slow to forget. When his son was having difficulties in high school he pulled him out and put him to work logging their property. After a year of this backbreaking work and the boy happily resumed his education, graduated from college and became a bank executive. (This now 76-year-old son was sitting with his mother in the surgical family waiting area when I came out to speak to them after the surgery.)

More