Silver Lining—Our Community | 167
In 1996 when I was 50 years old, Mike and I flew to Chicago to try a new, albeit not totally unproven, procedure called a fast CT scan because we wanted to make sure our hearts were healthy. I was at our global sales meeting in Breckenridge when I received a call to inform me the results of my scan were concerning. A good friend of mine at Cleveland Clinic, Doc Taylor, told me not to worry about it because the fast CT test was unproven. I had passed a stress test, and I was likely just fine. Then I had a heart catheterization, which was the only reliable way to determine if I had arterial blockage. When I received the results, I called Doc Taylor. His secretary, Dorothy, answered the phone. “Is Doc in?” “You want to shoot skeet with him?” she asked. “Is Doc in?” I repeated. She told me to come down and wait for him to get out of surgery. At 11 a.m., he came out, and I gave him the disk that had my results on it. “John, you are 95 percent blocked,” he said, and he choked up. I think he knew how my dad had died. “I don’t know how you are even existing, never mind moving around,” he said, and then he asked Dorothy how many surgeries he had scheduled the next day. “Two,” she said. “Make it three,” he said. He ordered me to go straight to the pre-operative area of his department. Marni and I were separated and on our way to divorce, so I didn’t involve her. I went to Mike’s house to let him and Marian know what was going on and then called a lawyer friend of mine to complete a late-night will signing. By sometime the next day, I was on a hospital gurney in post-op intensive care with tubes and wires in various parts of my body—nose, mouth, chest. Doc Taylor came in and let me know he had performed a quadruple bypass. To stay alive, I would have to stop doing all kinds of things, including working so hard. Andrei Thornton,