Cherie’s Open-Heart Surgery Fundraiser

I went to a fund-raising auction for a friend, Cherie Layton, this afternoon. She had open heart surgery a little over a year ago, but now a valve is failing and she has to undergo open heart surgery again. Twice in two years, ugh. Like once wasn’t costly and painful and difficult enough, she, and her family, has to go through it all again. I couldn’t possibly explain it all and convey to you how brave, humorous, and inspirational Cherie is, I’m just going to reprint her explanation of things.

“Here’s the scoop, about “wassa matta wit me. Evidently, I was born with an “extra” electrical pathway in my heart, and so, my heart can go into a very fast heart rate. About 20 years ago, there were several attempts to “ablate” (or sever) this pathway, with a procedure done much like a heart catheterization (NOT surgery). Anyhoo, during the last attempt, a catheter was accidentally passed through my aortic valve (oops!), and perforated one of the leaflets (I also had a stroke, and couldn’t see for three weeks, but that’s a story for another day). Since that time, my valve has been leaking. We have kept a close eye on my heart……..serial ultrasounds, etc, because you want to be sure that you get the timing just right for fixing the valve. You don’t want to do it before you need to, but you also don’t want to wait so long that the heart size and function is being compromised. They never did successfully ablate the pathway, so I have continued to have episodes of fast heart rate, although, I am usually able to stop it within a couple of minutes (with a valsalva maneuver, which is basically just “bearing down”). In the last 6 – 9 months, I have been more short of breath, and so, my cardiologist and I agreed that “now” is probably the time to get it fixed. I am a cardiac sonographer, and in October, attended a continuing education conference in Napa, CA. It was put on by the Mayo Clinic, and long story short, they ended up doing an echocardiogram on me, and feel that they can repair the valve, rather than replace the valve (normally, aortic valves are almost always replaced). It’s still open heart surgery, but the long term ramifications would be better for me, if I don’t have to get an actual “new” valve. So, AFTER the annual Christmas musical at GVCC, on December 20th, Scott and I are flying to Rochester, Minnesota. I’ll have several days of testing and procedures, then have surgery.”
If you like being uplifted and inspired by someone who faces life challenges with a smile, or if you just love highly entertaining writing, you should check out Cherie’s site on CaringBridge: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/cherielayton. At the moment, she is waiting on approval from her health insurance to allow her surgery to be done at the same facility as her previous one, Mayo Clinic. It’s one of the best surgical centers in the world, but also 2,000 miles away, and costly, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it is questionable what the insurance company will agree to cover. Sheesh. I know how that hassle goes. I have serious issues with the fact that insurance companies can compromise our quality of care in their financial self-interest.

There were some great moments during the auction. One of my favorites was when the auctioneer, this good-looking young guy, a singer, said that he was going to auction off his beard. He’s been growing his beard (a very stylish look on him) for a few months, and he has a concert next Sunday (he’s a singer) so the auction was that whoever won his beard could shave it off in any style they wanted and he would wear it that way for a week, including for the concert. The very first bid was $50! Gosh, that was a fun one. I think his beard went for $150. Now here’s the funny part . . . the guy who won the beard auction said he wanted to have the shave done right there during the auction (well, outside, but whatever). I actually stayed longer than I would have otherwise, because I wanted to see how the guy looked without a beard. I mean, what else could they do to him with a trimmer in the parking lot? I mean this guy was movie-star good-looking, and with an awesomely trimmed beard style he could have been an aristocrat in The Hunger Games or something equally fantastic and cool. He had the face to pull off something intricate, like with curlicues or something. When he came back in from being shaved, it took me a moment to realize what they had done with him. The guy shaved off his moustache on one side of his face, leaving the original beard on his cheek and chin, and shaved off his beard on the other side of his face, leaving just a moustache. So from the front it was an odd opposite what’s-wrong-with-this-picture sort of thing, but from a direct profile, he had two completely different and equally fashionable looks. From one profile he looked like he only had a moustache and from the other profile he looked like he just had a beard (without a moustache). I’m not describing this well, but all I can say is, either one works on this guy. He just has the bright eyes, happy smile, and ruddy cheeks to pull off any beard style.

Something else very cool and unusual was done by the fundraiser organizer, who is a very close friend of Cherie’s and the family. She’s a professional singer, so they auctioned her singing a live song if the bidding reached at least fifty dollars. That was accomplished in two seconds, of course, and people were cheering out different songs for her to sing. The loudest cheers were for her to sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, so that’s what she did. I was sitting with a one of my friends, Cathie, and her husband, and he (Joe, I think?) told me that this woman sang at their wedding! That was a neat little tidbit, and I think I enjoyed watching the two of them share a happy memory even more than the woman’s singing. Anyway, that was cool.

As for me, I got caught up in the bidding a few times. A couple of times were for artwork that I really liked, but the truth is that I have more artwork than my walls can sustain already, so in the end it was good that the bidding went even higher after I bid what I felt was my limit for the artwrok. The last, and most nerve-wracking auction I bid in was for some Bose noise-cancellation headphones and was about to be a hundred bucks poorer (I don’t really need new headphones, they were just so awesome, and bidding is fun!) but then a guy behind me made a bid and saved me. Don’t get me wrong, I went to the fundraiser to contribute funds, but if I had won every auction I bid on I would have put in a couple more thousand dollars than I could really afford to give away just now. I did, however, win the bidding on a s’mores maker that I’m going to give to my brother’s family for a camping present.

The very best part of the fundraiser, though, was when Cherie was there. Not THERE there, but on Facetime. This girl is hilarious, so full of character and love and life! When she first spoke to us (one of the auctioneers was holding up the iPad so we could see her and she could see us), Cherie thanked everyone for coming and told us she couldn’t really see how many people were there because she was too vain to put on her glasses. Then she proceeded to tell us all to look away, and she slipped her glasses on and exclaimed her amazement at how many people were there. She then quickly took her glasses off again and told everyone they could look at her again because she didn’t have her glasses on anymore. That’s just one little example of her humor. Another memorable comment from her was to ask the guy holding the iPad to tilt it down so she wasn’t looking right up the auctioneer’s nose, ha! And when her screen started flashing a message she read it out to us: “Charge Battery [pause], Charge Battery [pause], Charge Battery.” While Cherie was there on Facetime, her husband Scott got on the microphone to thank everyone and express the whole family’s appreciation. Naturally, we were all choking up as Sam did (he was rather speechless to see how many people attended, filling the entire auction hall). The great sadness breaker was where there was a HUGE sniffle over the microphone (not from Sam). We all burst out laughing to realize it was Cherie on Facetime. They lowered the volume on her speaker then. 

What a character.

Almost forgot to mention . . . I wore the purple wig with a dark purple top, and the wig was a serious hit. I think the purple one may be my new favorite, though I do have a new intense red one I’m looking forward to trying out on people later this week. And so far there isn’t a wig out there that holds a candle to my neon pink one for making people smile. The world is a better place when people are smiling, don’t you think?