opposite: I gave it my all, even when I knew from that first glance that I wasn’ t resuscitating my father but rather my mother’ s only hope that he could still be saved. In my mind, I barked orders at my body. Dial 911. Right hand over left. Interlace the fingers. Use the heel of the palm. Arms held long and stiff. Push to the rhythm of that Bee Gees’ song. Push deep. His ribs will crack. Count: 30 compressions, two rescue breaths, repeat.
Push. Push. Push. Push....
At the end, none of it was enough to save him. We don’ t know when he died, and we never will know. The coroner told me that livor mortis becomes fully visible on the human body anywhere from four to eight hours after the heart stops. He could’ ve gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom when his heart stopped, and he collapsed on the ground inches from his bed.
As the only person in my family that spoke anything remotely resembling fluent English, I had to make most of the decisions around funeral planning. But my family – cousins, uncles, aunts – all told me told me to skip the wake entirely and focus on studying for the exam,“ Because that was what your father would’ ve wanted.” I remembered wanting to quit medicine altogether, especially after one conversation.
During the wake, an out-of-town member of my father’ s family looked me straight in the eyes and asked me,“ You’ re a medical student, right?”
I nodded hesitantly.
“ There must’ ve been signs. There’ s always signs before a heart attack,” his voice shook with a hint of vitriol.“ What is the use of studying to be a doctor if you couldn’ t even notice your own father was dying in front of you?”
On my father’ s death certificate, the cause of death was listed as“ atherosclerotic disease.” The same week I was learning the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis, my father noticed something was wrong. He was feeding his chickens in the backyard when he felt breathless and a sudden numbness in his chest. He had a friend drive him to the local emergency room, where he had to use a virtual interpreter because he did not speak English. There was no EKG obtained, and he was discharged with a referral to a cardiologist. Later in October, he had an established care visit at the cardiologist’ s office with a follow-up for a resting EKG in early December.
He died on November 30. He was 57.
I know these details only because I learned them after he died. My parents never told me any of this, and they didn’ t want me to know at the time. In my family, as in many immigrant families, there was a sense of honor in enduring hardship silently and stoically, especially when sharing might distract one’ s children academically. He didn’ t want me to worry, so he never told me he went to the emergency room.
During Thanksgiving, he mentioned only that he had a“ sore feeling” in his abdomen that kept him awake at night. He had smoked for over 40 years and drank heavily despite repeated pleas from my mother, me, his doctor and even our pastor. But he loved a glass of wine paired with something spicy. There was always a green-tipped bottle of Sriracha on our kitchen counter because he would season his noodles and potstickers with generous dabs of red. In my very limited medical knowledge and experience, it sounded a lot like acid reflux. I gave him some antacid tablets and told him to lay off the spiciness and alcohol. He told me he was feeling better the night before he passed.
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