I’m Not Dead Day: Five years ago I died and lived to tell the tale.
Day 3 White Water Rafting Guide School, June 1, 2017 Rogue River Wilderness, South West Oregon
It was a beautiful day to die:
I’d accompanied my 17yr old daughter Mia to Rafting Guide school. As a minor she needed a parent present. As a seasoned professional guide, I thought of this as a summer camp/slash mindfulness retreat. I would stay out of the way, neither a student or a teacher. This would give me lots of time for meditation. It was a bit awkward, but by the third day we had worked out an arrangement. During instruction time, I’d be sitting off on the side meditating. When we were out on the water, I might help paddle a raft or take the one person Cataraft by myself. As a class IV guide on a mostly class III river, the instructors were Ok leaving me on my own.
Day three meant Mule Creek Canyon Rapid and Blossom Bar Rapid. My favorite set of rapids in the world. Normally on this run boats stay in close order, in case a boat flips or a paddler falls out and needs rescue. But in Guide School, you want to space things out. The new guides need room to make mistakes without the boats playing bumper cars. I went way last, which meant I got to run these rapids all by myself with no other boats in sight. These rapids are dangerous, with one or two deaths annually. But the flow that day was forgiving. I felt comfortable by myself having done these rapids a dozen times previously. I was so happy. Thrilled with the solitude.
The wild and scenic stretch of the Rogue River, is wilderness at its best. Over breakfast I watched two eagles team up to capture one fish out of the river. I watched another eagle take a fish away from an osprey. I somewhat measure the joy of my river trips based on the number of osprey and eagles I see capture fish. I’d never seen two eagles fish together before.
First I rowed Mule Creek Canyon, two miles of a crazy zig zagging canyon, with violent, bubbling hydraulics. Fun! I was belting out some favorite songs. First Jason Isbell, …. You thought God was an architect, …now you know, …. he’s simply a pipe bomb waiting to blow, and then the Grateful Dead,….. Sugar Magnolia, sunshine daydream… ,She’s got everything delightful,… she’s got everything I need…. …Takes the wheel when I’m seeing double, ….pays my tickets when I speed. …Been singing that song since I was sixteen. Sang that song as a lullaby when my children were babies.
Next I rowed Blossom Bar. A highly technical rapid, which means big boulders, lots or rocks, tricky hydraulics, with multiple must moves to find the gaps and get downstream. My adrenaline was coursing. My heart was racing. I was too distracted to sing. I had a beautiful run.
Something unfortunate:
At the bottom of Blossom Bar, exultant, blissed out on river love, I slid my boat into the giant eddy on river left. Across from me, on the shore, the instructors and guidelings were busy learning how to prepare lunch for big commercial trips. The eddy was too strong to row across, so I settled down for the 10 minutes it would take for the circular flow of the eddy to bring me around to the group. No one was paying attention to me. That’s just Crow (my guide name) taking his time. Meditating.
As my exuberance from the run settled down, I felt a burning in the middle of my chest. I was bummed. Heartburn? Really? Why? I never get heartburn. I’d had a light healthy breakfast. I thought about all the ads on TV for heartburn sufferers. I felt deep sympathy for them. But why now? As the boat circled around, the pain became worse and worse. My chest was on fire. Finally my boat drifted up to the group. I tied off to one of the big rafts.
I kept thinking, all those people in the TV ads, overweight and eating fatty foods and such. No wonder there are so many pills for heartburn. This is awful! I started to get sick to my stomach, so I got on my knees, and then… I went from terrible pain to the most delightful place I’ve ever been. I was so happy. I was calm, yet animated. I was at total peace for the first time in my life… And digging it!!!! Then it hit me. I’d read articles about this! I said to myself, this is great, but this means you’re dead…. I know we don’t get to interview the dead…. I don’t know if I willed myself back to life or if I was just lucky, but I was definitely,
FUCK THIS! I WANT TO LIVE!!!!!
Then I was awake, breathing. My left thumb felt like somebody had hit it with a hammer. My body felt like I’d been slammed into by a truck. I was scared. I knew I’d had a heart attack. I couldn’t speak, call for help. I knew people probably thought I was doing some sort of kneeling meditation. Finally one of the guidelings, a professional EMT, noticed. He called over, “Crow, are you OK?” I had enough voice to say “no, I’m having a heart attack…”
A series of fortunate events:
I was fortunate in that I was able to secure my boat before passing out. Had I passed out before tying up my boat, I would be dead. I would have drifted out of the eddy and into the next violent rapid, fallen out of the Cataraft, and drowned.
I was fortunate in that when I regained consciousness, the EMT guideling stepped away from making lunch and with his skilled eye recognized that I was not meditating and promptly gave me crushed aspirin. That’s critical intervention number one for someone having a heart attack.
I was fortunate in that even though we were in the middle of the wilderness, 25 miles from the nearest road, we were only half a mile upstream from a dirt airstrip near the river. I was medevaced out to the nearest regional hospital, which happens to specialize in heart attacks. If there was no airstrip, or we had passed it and I had to deal with the stress of three or four more hours on the river without medical care, I don’t know.
Widowmaker Heart Attacks:
Are The Most Fatal. The widowmaker is a massive heart attack that occurs when the left anterior descending artery (LAD) is totally or almost completely blocked. The critical blockage in the artery stops, usually a blood clot, all the blood flow to the left side of the heart, causing the heart to stop beating normally. Only about 12 percent of people who suffer this type of heart attack away from a hospital survive.* If you throw in passing out and 25 miles from the nearest road, well you’re dead.
In the helicopter they gave me nitroglycerin, and monitored my blood pressure. The nurse kept saying, “I can’t believe how good your heart rate and blood pressure are, I wish mine were as good!”
The next day I had three stents placed into my almost fully blocked Widowmaker artery. The heart attack was bad enough to kill me, but short enough to do no serious damage to my heart muscles. One MD compared my heart attack to placing a fat rubber band around a finger, stretching it out, and snapping it as hard as possible against the finger. It’s going to Sting! and leave a bright red welt, but it’s not actually hurting the finger.
My current Health:
I have a healthy heart, great EKG, great heart rate. Basically I’m a very healthy person, with three stents in the main artery going into the heart. I take statins, elevate my heart rate five times a week, and eat a low fat pescatarian Mediterranean diet (most all of the time :-). I should never have to deal with heart issues again. :)
Today
I moved my birthday to June 1. I found out it’s not as simple to embrace life as I expected it to be. Not wanting to die and wanting to live are not the same thing. One is based on fear and the other is based on hope and aspirations! I’m grateful to be alive. I try and set a positive intention every day. I think about the gift of life every week. We all have this one precious life to live. May we all live our lives to the fullest and support those around us to do the same. River Love.
*Time Magazine, Apr 8, 2021
