15 May 2026
Today marks my one-year anniversary of a life-changing experience. Since this morning, I have been reminiscing about what I was doing this time last year. During the lead-up to 15 May 2025, I didn’t have “blank page syndrome.” I wasn’t struck by another case of “writer’s block.” I wasn’t experiencing a “mid-life crisis;” however, for some people, what was indeed happening might be considered by others as one. My hesitation to write (and publish) this blog wasn’t because I was ashamed of what was happening. Throughout winter and spring 2025, I told very few people what was happening. Very few.
I had a bleeding heart. To be more medically precise, I had Aortic regurgitation—which means my Aortic valve wasn’t closing correctly, causing blood to leak back into my heart’s left ventricle. My Aortic valve wasn’t functioning properly because I had a congenital heart condition. Instead of the normal three leaflets in a healthy heart, my Aortic valve had two. I was born with a heart defect: no one’s fault. Moreover, there was a small hole in my heart, near the Aortic valve, which required my surgeon to repair it. So…yeah…my heart indeed was bleeding.
This blood leakage created strange blood pressure readings. I already had a (long) history of high blood pressure. Nonetheless, the more recent blood pressure numbers were different. They didn’t make sense.
I had heart failure, SEVERE heart failure. I didn’t know this medical fact until January 2025. Over fifty years, and I didn’t feel or sense anything wrong. When several medical imaging tests confirmed and re-confirmed that I had heart failure, my medical team insisted they perform open heart surgery no later than early Summer 2025…or else. The “or else”? I would have needed heart replacement surgery. Yes, I would have needed an entirely new heart! We caught this problem before it became even “more” severe. Hence, I chose not to tell many people, even my parents and sister. I told them afterward.
I needed a new aortic valve: mechanical or bioprosthetic (porcine or bovine—in other words, pig or cow). Yes, there are medications that can “manage” symptoms and delay complications of a failing aortic valve; however, no medication could improve or repair my damaged valve. I needed surgeons to replace the valve. Sooner rather than later, and evidently, much sooner than later. The left side of my heart was damaged severely, and yet I felt no obvious symptoms. Because I was in “relatively” good health, heart failure wasn’t a condition I worried about or monitored for. No one else in my family—that I know of—had heart birth defects.
The surgeon’s use of the word “severe” terrified me. Was I dying? How does dying “feel” like?
When another doctor performed my colonoscopy in May 2023, I already was haunted by this unanswerable existential question. When the anesthesiologist “put me under” (note the death and burial references) for the colonoscopy, I immediately felt the liquid medication flowing up my arm. “The anesthesia is cold… I feel it going up my arm…,” I barely managed to finish speaking those words. Instantaneously, everything faded to black. I didn’t feel anything. Absolute Blackness. Waking up later in the recovery room, I thought immediately, “Is death like that? Just utter blackness? No awareness of anything?” Only engulfing, pitch-black nothingness? Is that it?
I experienced another encounter with this darkness. This time, I didn’t receive any anesthesia. During one of my acupuncture treatments, I fell asleep. My unconscious-self took over. I saw a similar blackness… again, but this time, I was descending into a dark pit. Swirly, lightning-like streaks of black, blue, and purple light hovered above me. The more I sank in this pit, I saw a hazy black grayness surround me. I thought I saw the dead officers of the Katyn Massacres. The murdered Polish officers weren’t decomposed. They looked gray. Even the dirt was gray. Their military uniforms weren’t rotted. No bugs, earthworms…. Nothing.
A stunning insight into the nature of Evil then hit me.
Awakening too quickly from my acupuncture state of unconsciousness, I grabbed my smartphone, and typed notes about the details of this vision. After the acupuncture session was over, I rewrote BOOK TWO, my Katyn memoir’s “introduction,” retelling this waking dream in context of the Katyn Massacres and my intellectual, emotional, and artistic development. This daytime forever black-night vision both terrified and inspired me—so I thought—to figure out what the Katyn Massacres (and death) meant to me.
I know I am too fond of quoting Nietzsche’s famous line: “if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Even my students ask me: “Professor, why do you quote him so often?” Perhaps I’ll answer that question in another blog. Nonetheless, for me, his aphorism will not ever become trite or untrue. And I learned Nietzsche’s lesson the hard way… I allowed the abyss to stare back into me. Too many times. Were these dream-like warnings about my failing heart health? Maybe.
In February 2025, my cardiologist ordered a TEE scan, or transesophageal echocardiogram, a kind of ultrasound imaging test to determine more precisely the extent of my heart failure. For my cardiology team to perform this test, the anesthesiologist needed “to put me under” … again. As the name of the TEE procedure indicates, the physician inserted a tube with an ultrasound transducer down my esophagus. The images from the TEE scan provide the best determination of the severity of my heart failure. The mental darkness caused by the sedation happened quickly… again. All I can remember is how dark, black the Blackness is. When I emerged (again) from the depths, the thought repeated itself: “Is death like that?”
Can anyone know, really, what death is like? How could anyone really know? Why wasn’t there “light at the end of the tunnel”? Well, I didn’t die. Yet. I didn’t cross over to the other side. Heaven or Hell… or Purgatory? Well, it wasn’t my time to be judged. Yet. The Void? Nothingness? Nietzsche warned me, but I didn’t understand. Yet.
What of Faith? A complicated topic that I should blog about later, too; however, my instincts and philosophical rigor tell me that I might not like what I will stumble upon: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” (Genesis 3:19). See… even faith doesn’t make gaining insights into life and death easier. In fact, that biblical verse seems to confirm that there is nothingness afterward. Right now, my Catholic school education doesn’t feel like a helpful guide. I don’t know how to resolve this complicated dilemma; or should I just leave it to Faith—as I was instructed by my religious teachers?
When I contracted both COVID and RSV during late Fall 2023, I felt as if I were dying. I was dying. My heart was under attack. And I didn’t know. The viruses nearly overwhelmed my heart; and worse than the fact that I didn’t know… the medical team treating my COVID and RSV also didn’t know. I was unable to breathe at times because fluids and blood were regurgitating into my heart and lungs. I felt like I was drowning. Death itself was choking me. Again, no “light at the end of the tunnel;” instead, I thought “is it really Nothing?! Is Death just the black Nothingness?” During those terrifying and maddening moments, all I thought was to cough. I needed air! Coughing violently—in essence—was self-resuscitation. I was forcefully opening my breathing passages. “Breathe, damn it!” became my rallying cry. My body felt rigid. And each second that I couldn’t breathe, I felt my body getting more rigid. Analyzing my battle with COVID and RSV, my heart surgeon explained: “Yes, that was a warning! Your heart was deteriorating.”
My primary illness was heart failure. I did have a bad “flu” or COVID/RSV; nonetheless, no matter how many or how strong the prescribed medications I took to treat COVID, I still felt weak, struggling to breathe. The medicine didn’t work because… now, in hindsight… the medicines weren’t treating the real cause of my illness.
I now think there was another ignored symptom of ongoing heart failure: when I needed to stop taking my blood pressure medication in early Summer 2023. While driving on the parkway, I experienced dizziness; I saw swirly fuzzy eye floaters. I felt nauseous. Safely arriving home, I checked my blood pressure. An unusually low reading. Three hours later, my blood pressure still was abnormally low. During an emergency tele-health meeting, my then doctor told me, “You don’t need blood pressure pills anymore. We’ll just monitor it.” I certainly was happy about one fewer pill I needed to take; however, my diastolic (the bottom number) was oddly low. The doctor reassured me, saying: “You’re young… you’re in good shape…I’ll see you at the next annual.”
Dissatisfied with this healthcare assessment in July 2023, I decided to see a cardiologist. At first, the cardiologist wasn’t too alarmed about the unexpected and frankly sudden change in my blood pressure numbers. This doctor also confirmed what my general practitioner advised: “For now, you don’t need blood pressure medication, but… since I have you here, I want you to get an echocardiogram and a cardiac MRI. And then we’ll follow-up next year with another echo.” The echocardiogram results were inconclusive; my cardiologist insisted I have another test the following year—in 2024.
Late Summer 2024… soon after completing the revision of my Katyn memoir manuscript… I unknowingly touched poison sumac. Experts consider poison sumac to be worse than poison ivy and poison oak. During my ER examination, the nurse measured my blood pressure: very high systolic and very low diastolic numbers. “You should see your doctor about this,” the ER health care provider reprimanded me.
Even with medication and ointments, I needed over a month to recover from my poison sumac exposure. Six weeks later, I returned to the ER; this time, I had COVID again. My blood pressure numbers continued to be strange: high systolic and low diastolic. I scheduled an appointment with my primary care physician, but on the day of my planned visit, the office cancelled it. This doctor was leaving the practice. I tried to make another appointment with a doctor at the same practice. No available days until the following year.
I found an entirely new general practitioner; however, when I arrived at the office, the staff told me: “you have no appointment.” Something strange was happening. Why was seeing a doctor so difficult?
“Just go to that cardiologist you saw last year. He can write you a script for blood pressure medicine,” my family declared, equally frustrated with the other cancellations. I made an appointment with the cardiologist. The time frame was Christmas 2024. I was back on blood pressure pills. The cardiologist repeated what he said last year, “well, since I have you here, let’s do an echocardiogram and MRI.”
A week later, the results were in, and the cardiologist’s office manager called me to set an immediate telehealth appointment. “Hello. Are you experiencing any symptoms right now?” my cardiologist asked during our telehealth meeting. Scared, I replied, “Should I be?”
“Yes!” he said.
Terrified, I asked, “Like what?” I began to panic. I wanted to cry.
As my cardiologist listed my options of heart valves and the best heart surgeons, I thought about all the things I hadn’t done or finished. In some cases, I hadn’t even tried yet. I needed to guide my youngest son through the college application process. I needed to witness my oldest child becoming a surgeon. I needed to visit Barcelona. I needed to publish my Katyn memoir. I wasn’t yet finished living my life.