(9) The Big Hit    After being evacuated from Fairbanks, I was now under observation in the intensive care unit at Providence Hospital, in Anchorage. Several of the nurses commented to me that I had taken a “Big Hit.”  I finally asked one of them what this meant. She explained that she had been working there for a number of years, and that mine was the highest troponin level she had ever seen. (Troponin is a marker for cardiac muscle breakdown and cell death; its presence is one of the signs doctors use to confirm that a heart attack has occurred.) I am not sure I wanted to know this information. After another day of recovery, young Dr. B. asked me what I would like to do next. He said that the most likely explanation for what I had experienced was that my left descending coronary artery was permanently blocked, and that the part of my heart that it fed was permanently damaged. He persuaded me to have another angiogram, just to check out the damage and see if perhaps something could be done. He promised that he would play whatever music I wanted in the operating room. For reasons I can’t explain, the idea of my being able to listen to music during the procedure convinced me to give my consent. Dr. B. started the angiogram procedure by trying to put a catheter into my femoral artery, but he was having trouble getting through because of the scar tissue from the previous three angiograms.  I asked about the music. He asked one of the technicians in the operating room to play some music over the stereo system for me, and John Denver began singing, "Take me Home...," not exactly what I had in mind when I had imagined the healing powers of music. I overheard one of the technicians as they began to converse with each other, "Didn't John Denver die  in an airplane crash?” the first one asked. This was not an auspicious start to the operation.   February 21, 2007