Syedyshev Oleg
Syedyshev Oleg

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Humorous Essays Based on students' memories

"All have died
except for those who are alive, and those whom we remember"Confucius

Essay 116. Here's a fine how d'ye do!

Yes, exactly one year ago, on the sixth of June, I had a surgery of coronary artery bypass grafting, five bypasses were grafted. Well, if to look into it, it's not an occasion to celebrate, as, for instance, birthday or the New Year. However why not to consider the date as my birthday?
I did not have any complaints about my heart, and I had never even thought about it. For the last fifteen years I suffered of labored breathing, and I helped myself with "Galazolin" nose drops (xylometazoline). It looked like I became addicted to Galazoline, to cut it short a drug addict of Galazolin; I used the nose drops up to four-five times a day, otherwise I had a headache and could not think clearly. I got used to the situation; basically it did not bother me, as I had Galazolin everywhere - at my bed table and in my car, and in my office, in short, everywhere. A year before CABG (coronary artery bypass grafting) my guardian angel went to a "Virtus" clinic in Odessa because of some of her own business. There she was told that they had a magically good doctor who did that kind of surgeries with excellent results. So the guardian angel started pestering me by repeating that we had to go there. What was there to be afraid of? Basically I was not scared; I just had no time to waste. Nevertheless giving up to Natalek I agreed, and went to Odessa.

   P.A.Zaporozhchenko  

P.A.Zaporozhchenko

We booked a private ward with two beds, as Natasha promised to take care of me after the surgery. Well, in my humorous essays I usually depict humorous situations similar to that one. So I absolutely do not remember that, but nurses from a postoperative ward told me laughing than when they were waking me up after anesthesia, they kept approaching me with a question about how I was feeling. So after the third question of that kind I demanded to call my wife, Natalek, to the ward, because I got fed up with their curiosity and, as I stated, unhealthy interest to the way I was feeling. The nurses were women, for some reason it pleased them that the first person I wanted to see after the surgery was my wife, and not them. Literally in half an hour the whole clinic knew about that, so after I completely came to my consciousness and was lying in my ward with a nose stuffed with tampons, almost everybody of the staff of the clinic visited me with the provocative question: "How are you feeling?" I was really weak after the surgery, or I would've made them acquainted with the complete arsenal of curse words I knew. In spite of my feebleness, I remembered one of the visitors. It was Leonid Fomitch Gerber. He was a very charming person, I just could not swear at him in response to his "How are you feeling?" I do not remember our conversation completely now, as it was not a dialogue, but more of a monologue of Fomitch. He got carried away. He was chatting as if he had spent a month in a one-man cell, where he had nobody to exchange a few words. He was telling jokes, and I should say, he was really good at it. He was talking about "Virtus" and the achievements of "Virtus" and then somehow switched to his own health. He told me that he had had CABG surgery in Kiev at a Heart Center, and his surgeon was an academician Boris Mikhailovitch Todurov himself.

B.M.Todurov

B.M.Todurov



Leonid Fomitch started taking his clothes off in order to demonstrate his scars left after the surgery; only Natasha's presence in the ward stopped him from stripping himself completely. I was nodding, but Natasha remembered everything that had been said. Especially well she remembered the phrase that it was better to get to the Kiev clinic by himself alive and kicking, but not like he - by an ambulance-plane. I was discharged from the clinic. Thanks to "Virtus" for about two years I have not used Galazolin even once. Though, Natasha started again and again persistently talking about a check up of my heart. I resisted, as I did not feel any problems. Only Natalek, too, could be insistent, so I gave up on a condition that both of us would have check ups and have them in the "Into-Sana" clinic in Odessa. The clinic was praised and recommended to us by the Leonid Fomitch; he also gave a name of a doctor to visit.

Well, a bicycle ergometer indicated signs of stenocardia, and a coronary ventriculography - sclerosis of coronary vessels up to ninety two per cent of opening.

After that conclusion there was no need to persuade me. The fact that I had coronary venrticulography on 23 May, and my surgery was on 6 June was only a result of the academician B.M.Todurov being not in Ukraine, he was at a conference abroad. As soon as he returned to his Center on the second of June, my surgery was scheduled on the sixth of June. I remembered a phrase said by Boris Mikhailovitch: "You've made it in time...".

And the starting point was a desire to undress himself of Leonid Fomitch, a wonderful doctor and just a good man.

6 June, 2012

© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
Publishing licence #213103001345

Translated by Viktoria Potykinato content ↑


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