Archives for 2019

“The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “Ideals and Doubts”

After a seemingly endless series of skirmishes with Murphy’s Law, Mrs. T was finally bundled into an ambulance on Tuesday night and shipped from the University of Connecticut Health Center to New York-Presbyterian, the upper Manhattan hospital where she will ultimately receive a double lung transplant.

I beat her to New York by about twenty minutes, unloaded the one-way rental car (thank you, Hertz) that I used to drive from point A to point B, and fell gratefully into bed. It is, I suppose, possible to be more tired than I was, but I don’t see how, though several more hours went by before I finally grew sleepy enough to shut down my MacBook and put out the light, muttering a grumpy string of variations on “Tomorrow is another day!” as I did so.

So…now what? Quite a few of my readers seem to have picked up the mistaken notion that Mrs. T was rushed back to New York after getting the Big Call, and that she’ll be going under the knife any minute now. Would that it were so! She is, to be sure, “ripe” for transplant, as her doctors put it, but to date Mrs. T has yet to receive an organ offer. Instead, she was sent back to New York as a precaution—albeit an urgent one.

When you’re in the end stage of pulmonary hypertension, the rare and deadly disease that has laid Mrs. T low, the right ventricle of your heart can start to “decompensate” at any time without much advance warning. Once that happens, you need to be transplanted on the double. If you’re not near a transplant center when it happens—and UConn, the center for her pulmonary-hypertension care, doesn’t do lung transplants—then you’re out of luck.

It hasn’t happened to Mrs. T—yet—but the oxygen-related crises that have beset her with increasing frequency in recent weeks suggest that her right ventricle is starting at long last to wear out. For this reason, her doctors in New York and Connecticut agreed yesterday that it was essential to get Mrs. T to New York-Presbyterian, her transplant center, as soon as possible, there to await surgery.

What happens next depends on when—and if—a pair of suitable lungs becomes available. As I’ve previously written in this space:

Would that there were enough donor lungs to go around! But there aren’t, which is the reason for the organ allocation list, which divvys up donor organs in the United States according to a complex formula that weighs the comparative needs of their potential recipients. For the past month or so, Mrs. T’s allocation “score” has been hovering above 50 (out of 100). This means she’s sick enough to start receiving organ offers as soon as a suitable pair of lungs becomes available—so long as it isn’t equally suitable to someone who outscores her.

Our hope is that the events of the past week will increase her score significantly. We’ll learn more about that in the next couple of days. In the meantime…we wait.

For now, Mrs. T will be waiting for the Big Call in New York-Presbyterian’s ICU. Should her condition stabilize sufficiently to send her back home to our New York apartment, which is thirteen blocks north of the hospital, she’ll wait there. Either way, she isn’t going anywhere else. Mrs. T is now extremely frail and needs an abundance of loving care, which I’m doing all I can to supply. No matter what happens, though, we won’t be returning to Connecticut any time soon. Barring some wholly unforeseen development, we’re here for the duration—and time appears to be running out, slowly but surely.

No visitors just yet, please: we’ll let you know when Mrs. T feels like company again. Your best wishes are enough for the moment. Believe me, they matter—a lot. And as usual, allow me to repeat my familiar plea: if you haven’t signed up to be an organ donor, please do so now, and encourage your friends to do likewise. That could matter even more.

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“The others wait…and wait…and wait…and wait.” The opening scene of Casablanca:

Ethel Bartlett, Alexander Brailowsky, Gaby Casadesus, Sidney Foster, Rudolph Ganz, Eugene List, Moura Lympany, Guiomar Novaes, Rae Robertson and Beveridge Webster perform Chopin’s A Major Polonaise in unison. This performance, conducted by Rudolf Ganz, was telecast live from Carnegie Hall by CBS on October 18, 1953 as part of The Ed Sullivan Show in celebration of the centenary of the founding of Steinway & Sons:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“‘Well, what did the school give you?’ said Maria.

“‘It taught me to trust no one and to expect nothing,’ said her stepson, in his deep, smooth, rapid tones. ‘To keep everything from everyone, especially from my nearest friends. That familiarity breeds contempt, and ought to breed it. It is through familiarity that we get to know each other.’”

Ivy Compton-Burnett, Two Worlds and Their Ways

The thirty-fifth episode of Three on the Aisle, the (usually) twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.

Here’s an excerpt from American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings: 

First, the critics discuss the idea of “guilty pleasure” musicals, and Elisabeth refines her personal definition of “not good but kind of great” productions. Then, they turn to the mailbag, answering your questions about how best to review a revival, the state of America’s “indie musical scene,” and how critics should approach everything from tech failures to standing ovations.

Finally, they reflect on the best shows they’ve seen lately, including Jane Chambers’ Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, and Shakespeare & Company’s production of The Waverly Gallery….

To listen to or download this episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you’ve missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

From 2009: 

“Westerns are timeless. The soundtracks rarely are.” Lileks tweeted that pithy two-liner a few weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I love Westerns, but most of them have scores that are inoffensive at best, appallingly banal at worst. The exceptions to the rule are as rare as they’re noteworthy….

Read the whole thing here.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you probably already know that Mrs. T was rushed by ambulance last Thursday morning from our country place in Connecticut to the University of Connecticut Health Center. Once again, her blood oxygen level crashed without warning, but I was spending a couple of nights at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, which is three hours away from us, instead of sticking close to home in my capacity as her caregiver-in-chief. Fortunately, our quick-witted houseguest (bless you, Marie!) took matters into her own hands and called 911, and UConn’s ICU team had the situation well in hand by the time I got to the hospital.

It took rather longer for the doctors there to decide what had caused the crisis in the first place. At first they thought Mrs. T might have pneumonia or—much, much worse—a pulmonary embolism. It turned out, though, that what she needed was a higher dose of Remodulin, the vasodilator that is delivered to her heart and lungs around the clock via a central line in her chest, thus keeping her alive and (passably) well. No sooner was the dosage of this wonder drug increased than her oxygen levels started inching back upward.

Her recovery, alas, was well and truly unpleasant. Remodulin is a powerful drug with chemotherapy-like side effects, including nausea, anorexia, and severe joint pain, and she spent a whole day feeling miserable while her body adjusted to the higher dosage. She’s better now, though, and is resting as comfortably as you can in an intensive-care unit, such places having been known to sound like a cross between a modern-day casino and an old-fashioned madhouse.

What next? The plan (laugh, God!) is for Mrs. T to be transferred to New York-Presbyterian Hospital, her transplant center, later today or early tomorrow. You will doubtless recall that we went through the same thing for the same reasons three weeks ago, partly as a sensible precaution and partly in the hope of shortening the odds that she’ll receive a new pair of lungs before she becomes too sick to be transplanted successfully:

She was moved there in preparation for the double lung transplant that she must undergo in order to cure her pulmonary hypertension. Her doctors agree that the time for transplant is ripe. While she’s stable for now, the attack of sepsis from which she’s recovering has left her extremely fragile, and the right ventricle of her heart, which was already weakened by years of chronic illness, could decompensate suddenly and without warning. This is why she was moved to New York: if her right ventricle starts to fail, she’ll need new lungs immediately.

The clock, in short, is running.

Would that there were enough donor lungs to go around! But there aren’t, which is the reason for the organ allocation list, which divvys up donor organs in the United States according to a complex formula that weighs the comparative needs of their potential recipients. For the past month or so, Mrs. T’s allocation “score” has been hovering above 50 (out of 100). This means she’s sick enough to start receiving organ offers as soon as a suitable pair of lungs becomes available—so long as it isn’t equally suitable to someone who outscores her.

Anyway, that’s the situation as of this hour. By the time most of you read these words, I’ll be on my way to upper Manhattan via one-way rental car, there to await Mrs. T’s arrival via ambulance or helicopter (they hadn’t decided which when I wrote this posting). After she gets there, a fresh set of ICU doctors will resume the task of weaning her off high-flow hospital-only oxygen so that she can be discharged and sent back home to our apartment, which is just thirteen blocks north of New York-Presbyterian, the hospital where she’ll ultimately be transplanted—if our luck continues to hold.

I’m sure you can imagine how rough things have been of late for both of us. I feel like I’ve spent the greater part of the past three weeks driving from one hospital to the next, while Mrs. T’s assault-and-battery sufferings make my “troubles” look like namby-pamby kid stuff.

As I tweeted the other day:

Mrs. T hates it when I praise her in public, but I’ve got to say it: she is the toughest cookie ever to come out of the jar. I’d be whining around the clock if I were one-tenth as sick as she is. Instead, she grins and bears it like the gallant gal she is. She’s my inspiration, today and every day, and I’m lucky beyond belief to be married to her.

For the moment, though, we’ll both be more than happy to hang up our traveling shoes and stay put in upper Manhattan while waiting for the Big Call. Here’s hoping.

One more thing: if you haven’t signed up to be an organ donor, do it now. Desperately sick people all across America—including Mrs. T—are hoping, very often against hope, to receive donor organs before it’s too late. Please give them a chance to start a new life!

UPDATE: As of now, no beds are open in New York-Presbyterian’s ICU, so Mrs. T and I are sitting tight in Connecticut. We’ll head south as soon as we get the word, but it could be a couple of days. Meanwhile, I’m going back to bed!

UPDATE (2): Mrs. T now has an ICU bed in New York. We are sitting tight in Connecticut, waiting for official confirmation that she’s been approved for transfer via helicopter—later tonight, I hope.

UPDATE (3): Well, guess what? Mrs. T has now been officially cleared for airlift to New York-Presbyterian—but it turns out that they do not yet have an ICU bed for her, at least not yet. I doubt that either of us will be hitting the road until Tuesday (sigh). Still, she’s good to go!

(That was the polite version of my feelings at this moment. The uncensored version is rather more pungent.)

UPDATE (4): That’s it, I-T, it. Did I say “IT”? I am now officially BURNED OUT. I’m going to order a pizza, watch the silliest, most anesthetizing movie I can find, and go to bed shortly after sunset. After all…tomorrow is another day.