OPINION
This is one of the few times that I’ve had arguments with myself on what to title our award-winning column that appears here in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle. I first wanted to call it The Organ Recital. Next, I wanted to dub it Polishing the Brass on the Titanic. And I settled on He Has Good Color.
When my father passed away due to a massive third heart attack in Saint Margaret’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, there was a waiting room with a gaggle of women whose husbands had had cardiac arrests and were probably waiting for the Reaper. But they always made a point of going in and looking at the other women’s husbands and coming back offering words of encouragement, “He has good color.” And that poor old bastard would go climb Space Mountain by the next day.
I just had a very frightening medical experience. Mind you I’m pushing 80, as legendary biker builder Jeff Decker said to me, name another person who has a radio show when they’re almost 80, and all I could think of was Bob Hope.
I’d been having a very hard time physically these last couple of months and for whatever reason I was choosing to ignore it. What I didn’t realize at the time, I was headed into congestive heart failure.
I’ve always been very close to Dr. Julie McCallen at Cenegenics. She’s been such a wonderful healer in my life but has taken semi-retirement. She was in her clinic on a day that sh
e wasn’t really supposed to be there. In fact, she was supposed to be in Europe. I pretty much had enough of my hard time functioning and went to see the folks at the clinic and lo and behold, Julie McCallen was there. They sent me immediately to the ER.
The publisher of this newspaper and I share, and have dubbed him, “cardiologist to the stars,” Dr. Nelson Prager. Dr. Prager and the staff at Medical Center of Aurora, after a nine-day stay, really did put together a diagnosis of everything that was going on with me.
I can’t fix cars anymore. When I open the hood of the truck or look at a motorcycle engine I’m totally baffled. But there was a time when we could do points and plugs and oil change, a new condenser, and we could do our own tune-up in the backyard,
I firmly believe that all of us do need that tune-up and I’m lucky I caught mine in time. Things look good.
The next thing I realized is with my inner circle of friends, I’ve dubbed it the organ recital. A group of men, we used to talk about women, politics, music, sports, using intoxicants, often times illicit. Now it begins with, “How’s your liver? How’s your colon? How’s your heart and are you breathing well enough?” We’re reciting the conditions that our organs are in. And hence, as Patsy Ramsey wrote, it’s the organ recital.
And finally, when my daughter picked me up from the hospital, and I got in her car, and we’re driving home I said to myself, “Am I just polishing the brass on the Titanic?” I’m clearly on the back nine.
I made even more changes in my life ,and something that I never thought I would do — I ordered a three-wheeled motorcycle. And I’m gonna live forever. I’m gonna learn to fly. And we can’t make Denver and Colorado politicians crazy if we don’t have this column and a weekly radio show.
I dodged a bullet and once again I call myself the luckiest guy I’ve ever known.
— Peter Boyles