Remembering my MLK Day miracle.
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January 17th, 2022 at 9:02:34 AM
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It was Martin Luther King Day in 2005. I was supposed to take my mom out for lunch but she called me fairly early and said she wasn't feeling great so we canceled. We'd go out to eat a few times a month so it wasn't a big deal. I went back to whatever I was doing and didn't give it much thought.
My sister was working as a school administrator and had the day off so after a morning of running around called my mom to see what she was up to. When she was told my mom was still in bed after 11AM, it set off alarms and she drove over there.
Once there, she said my mom was cold to the touch and looked horrible. She gave her a choice. Come with her to the hospital or she'd call 911 and an ambulance would take her. With my mom in the car, she called me and I said I'd meet them there. Somehow, I beat them there and saw the shape my mother was in. She could hardly walk so I carried her into the ER where they started treating her immediately. It couldn't have been three minutes from the time we walked in until she was on a gurney and taken into surgery.
We were told she needed an angioplasty(?) and it would be about two hours before there was any news.
My sister and I went to the chapel and weren't there more than a few minutes when we heard them paging the family of Patricia Ryan and asking us to report to some desk.
When we got there , we were told she was in very bad shape and needed immediate open-heart surgery. I asked the Dr. if he was going to perform it but he said no. He said we were really lucky because the surgeon who was to operate would normally not have been available but the person he'd been scheduled to operate on was somehow too sick so he was available.
We were introduced to him and I wasn't very impressed. He was a reed-thin man, in his early 30s and spoke with a very thick accent.
Not at all what I was expecting a heart surgeon in the most prestigious hospital on Long Island. He did have a very comforting manner about him and then he was gone. They said it would be a few hours and I couldn't just sit there so I said I was going to Garden City to tell my moms sisters what was going on. On the way there, I swung by my apartment to see if I could find anything on this new doctor.
What I found amazed me.
He had been profiled by the NY Daily News the year before.
He was from Colombia and his mom had left him and his brother with relatives when he was eight to go to NY and other than a few phone calls they hadn't talked in years. At 16, he and his brother ran away and hitchhiked and walked to Texas, where a charity gave them bus tickets to NY.
They never did find their mother but a distant relative took them in with the understanding they stay off the streets and go to school. At 17, without speaking more than a few words of English he started school in America. 18 months later, he graduated first in his class and was awarded a full scholarship to Yale. Four years later he won a scholarship to Harvard Medical School where he finished third in the class. The article went on to say that he had performed over 3,000 life-saving operations and that he was the star of a series of Spanish language animated episodes where he was known as Doctor Miracle.
The operation was a success and after an extended recovery, my mom was back to normal. A cardiologist friend told me this operation should mean another ten years or so and that's almost exactly what happened.
One Saturday in October 2015, my mom called me and asked if I could take that Sunday off and spend it with her. I told her I had to work but she offered to pay me for the day. When I realized it would be the first anniversary of my sister's death, I took the day off and spent it with her. That night, about 11PM she kept complaining of pain in her side, and even though she said not to, I called an ambulance. This time there was nothing to work with, the surgeon said her heart had literally worn out.
I think of her often, but every MLK Day I think of the illegal alien who traveled thousands of miles just to be in the position to save my mother's life, as well as the thousands of other families this man has affectred.
My sister was working as a school administrator and had the day off so after a morning of running around called my mom to see what she was up to. When she was told my mom was still in bed after 11AM, it set off alarms and she drove over there.
Once there, she said my mom was cold to the touch and looked horrible. She gave her a choice. Come with her to the hospital or she'd call 911 and an ambulance would take her. With my mom in the car, she called me and I said I'd meet them there. Somehow, I beat them there and saw the shape my mother was in. She could hardly walk so I carried her into the ER where they started treating her immediately. It couldn't have been three minutes from the time we walked in until she was on a gurney and taken into surgery.
We were told she needed an angioplasty(?) and it would be about two hours before there was any news.
My sister and I went to the chapel and weren't there more than a few minutes when we heard them paging the family of Patricia Ryan and asking us to report to some desk.
When we got there , we were told she was in very bad shape and needed immediate open-heart surgery. I asked the Dr. if he was going to perform it but he said no. He said we were really lucky because the surgeon who was to operate would normally not have been available but the person he'd been scheduled to operate on was somehow too sick so he was available.
We were introduced to him and I wasn't very impressed. He was a reed-thin man, in his early 30s and spoke with a very thick accent.
Not at all what I was expecting a heart surgeon in the most prestigious hospital on Long Island. He did have a very comforting manner about him and then he was gone. They said it would be a few hours and I couldn't just sit there so I said I was going to Garden City to tell my moms sisters what was going on. On the way there, I swung by my apartment to see if I could find anything on this new doctor.
What I found amazed me.
He had been profiled by the NY Daily News the year before.
He was from Colombia and his mom had left him and his brother with relatives when he was eight to go to NY and other than a few phone calls they hadn't talked in years. At 16, he and his brother ran away and hitchhiked and walked to Texas, where a charity gave them bus tickets to NY.
They never did find their mother but a distant relative took them in with the understanding they stay off the streets and go to school. At 17, without speaking more than a few words of English he started school in America. 18 months later, he graduated first in his class and was awarded a full scholarship to Yale. Four years later he won a scholarship to Harvard Medical School where he finished third in the class. The article went on to say that he had performed over 3,000 life-saving operations and that he was the star of a series of Spanish language animated episodes where he was known as Doctor Miracle.
The operation was a success and after an extended recovery, my mom was back to normal. A cardiologist friend told me this operation should mean another ten years or so and that's almost exactly what happened.
One Saturday in October 2015, my mom called me and asked if I could take that Sunday off and spend it with her. I told her I had to work but she offered to pay me for the day. When I realized it would be the first anniversary of my sister's death, I took the day off and spent it with her. That night, about 11PM she kept complaining of pain in her side, and even though she said not to, I called an ambulance. This time there was nothing to work with, the surgeon said her heart had literally worn out.
I think of her often, but every MLK Day I think of the illegal alien who traveled thousands of miles just to be in the position to save my mother's life, as well as the thousands of other families this man has affectred.
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction is supposed to make sense.
