On the Thursday before Easter Dale Erb and his wife, Maria, were making a beeline for the Kansas Heart Hospital in Wichita. ERB HAD come down with a slight cough the previous fall — a cough that persisted well into winter. By March, indications were that it was more than a common cold. Erb was referred to a pulmonologist, who, finding fluid in the 59-year-old’s lungs, insisted that he meet with a cardiologist. AS THE ERBS neared Wichita, a storm was brewing in the winds. Dark clouds churned above the city and the air around them grew quiet. They had reached their two grown daughters by phone earlier, to warn them of the sudden swerve their day had taken. “IT DEPENDS on who you are,” said Erb, “some people call it a ‘bro,’ some people call it a ‘man-bra.’” He pushed his chair away from the table and unbuttoned his shirt to the navel, parting it wide enough to reveal the specialized garment: a broad band of cloth encircled his ribcage, held in place by two slender straps, which traveled over each of his bare shoulders and fastened at the back. AS ERB SPOKE, the top four buttons of his shirt remained undone. A glossy, pink scar, the length of a pencil, runs down the center of his chest, an ornament of his first surgery. THE LIFEVEST specialist in Wichita gave Erb a business card, which the patient was instructed to carry at all times. Erb plucks the card from his shirtfront pocket and reads: “The patient carrying this card is at high risk of dying suddenly.” Erb puts the card — a card we all carry implicitly — back in his pocket. “So does that mean — yeah, I know what that means. It means I may not walk out of this room. It means I may not get home. May not wake up in the morning. That’s what it means.
A few hours earlier, during a checkup with a visiting cardiologist at Allen County Regional Hospital, Erb learned that his heart — which an echocardiogram revealed working at only 20 percent capacity, and on the downslide — was in need of rapid medical attention.
“Dr. Reusser left the room and my wife and I tried to compose ourselves. Out in the hallway, [he] stopped us and he looked at my wife and he said, ‘Is there any reason you can’t have Dale at the Heart Hospital tonight?’ ‘No,’ she said. But she asked, ‘Why tonight? Why not Tuesday?’” Erb was already marked down for a heart catheterization the next week. “His answer was: ‘I cannot guarantee that Dale will be alive on Tuesday.’”
In 1997, Erb, who has a family history of heart trouble, underwent a triple bypass. “The surgeon that did that told me: ‘I will see you back on the table in five years.’ He said that is the average. That was 18 years ago. But, trust me, for the last six months of that five-year-plan, I was watching the calendar. ”
And so, last spring, when Dr. Reusser described the grim read-out of his echo test, Erb felt all his thoughts being swept back out to sea, “to the point where I was just like: ‘Is this real? Is this actually real?’”
But he quickly buried the thought. ”The doctor wanted us at the Heart Hospital that night. So, you know, we processed it, and decided at that point in time: I’m not done. We are not giving up.”
“And then it hit,” said Erb. “That was the night the big storm came to Wichita, knocking out power as it went.” The blackout fanned out across the east side of the city. Streetlights on both sides of the road were going dark. “We were seeing them go out as we passed.”
By the time the pair reached the hospital, the power was out there, too. The life-support machines in each room continued to pulse throughout that night, thanks to building’s backup generator — but Erb’s catheter test was delayed until Monday, and the couple spent Easter in the hospital’s care.
“A [cardiac catheterization],” said Erb, “is when they go through your groin with a long tube, and go into your larger blood vessel. They go up with a camera and look at all the veins, vessels and valves of your heart.”
The results of the test showed a heart long-assaulted by a severe viral infection. While Erb did not require a second bypass, he was judged to be at high risk for sudden cardiac death, and was outfitted with a special — wearable — defibrillator, a Zoll Medical LifeVest.
The slim harness is fitted with a series of electrodes connected to a monitor about the size of a camera case, which Erb wears slung across his body.
If the monitor senses a life-threatening irregularity in his heartbeat, it will emit a loud, screeching noise. If not silenced in a matter of seconds, the vest — assuming that its wearer has fallen unconscious — begins to secrete a blue gel, coating the skin to protect it from burns.
At that point, as Erb puts it, “bam!” — the lightweight device delivers a heavy electrical shock to the torso in an attempt to rescue the heart from dying. “Each day this thing does not go off is a huge relief.”
Erb will see another cardiac specialist at the end of this month — “I call him the electrician” — and will learn then how much longer he is required to wear the vest (which is costing the LaHarpe resident $3,400 a month). Erb figures he is in line for an implantable defibrillator, a tiny device that administers its jolts from within the heart itself.
“When they said you’re going for bypass surgery, in ’97, I immediately set three goals: I was going to walk both my girls down the aisle” — goals one and two — “and I was going to celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary. I did those things.”
The Erbs intend to mark their 40th anniversary this November. “See, I continue to set goals. We made a promise years ago and one of them was that we would grow old together. There’s no reason to give up. I want to take my wife vacationing, we want to do some tripping.
“I’ll never get her to one place she’s always wanted to go, but I’m going to get her to the other. She wants to see the ocean. Somehow I’m going to get her to the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico or some place so she gets the ocean effect. She’s always wanted to go to Ireland, and I’ll never get her there — I know that. But she’s never seen the ocean.”
A former nickel plater at Precision International, Erb is a diffident man, reluctant to tell his story except for the encouragement it may offer others riding that narrow crease between life and death. He doesn’t claim any great wisdom from his experience, but admits that it concentrates the mind.
“But I’m not done. I may not be making the most positive impact on this earth, or in Iola, or in Allen County. But I want to keep going. There are just too many things in life to get to. Got to get that 50th wedding anniversary. Got to get her close enough to an ocean that she can see it.
“Also, we want to go back to Vegas. Listen, I got her out there four years ago. Had a blast.”
Living one beat at a time
