“The grace of God” and quality care during open heart surgery

Thurman “Tom” Maine’s life is centered around his faith. So, when the physician assistant for the cardiac surgeon that was going to perform his quadruple bypass surgery walked into his hospital room, his worries evaporated.

“What others call coincidences, I like to call ‘God winks,’ so when Chris Ryan (PA) walked in the door with a smile on his face, that was a little God wink that everything’s going to be OK,” Maine, 61, said. “We’re a family of faith and I never had any anxieties.”

Ryan works with Cape Cod Hospital Cardiac Surgeon Saqib Masroor, MD, and is also a member of Cape Cod Church in East Falmouth, where Maine is associate pastor.

The entire surgical and hospital experience proceeded in the same smooth way, Maine said, despite the uncertainty and shock he, as a Coast Guard veteran in great shape, was feeling at finding himself in the hospital after a heart attack.

“You have one strong paradigm about how your life is going and how it’s going to proceed and suddenly that paradigm is just snapped, and you’ve got a whole different way to look at life,” Maine said, during a phone call several weeks after his surgery. “It was almost too much to process, honestly. I thank God and thank the team at Cape Cod Hospital for getting me through it, and now I’m on a new path.”

Maine’s ordeal began on an unseasonably mild day in February. He admitted he had been having some heart attack symptoms “that I cleverly ignored for a couple weeks,” but he decided to take advantage of the weather and wash his truck.

That night, he said he felt some tension in his chest and, a little after midnight, woke up with a sensation that felt like “somebody sitting on my chest.” Still not willing to accept that something was wrong, he told his wife, Annette, he was having some indigestion and went downstairs to sit up for a while. By morning, he could no longer ignore the pain and asked his wife to drive him to the Falmouth Hospital Emergency Center.

“I learned that if you’re lonely and you want to have some friends in a hurry, walk into an ER and say the words ‘chest pain,’” Maine joked. “Suddenly a Nascar pit crew was surrounding me.”

After an EKG and blood work, Maine, who lives in Mashpee, was transferred to Cape Cod Hospital for further treatment. He met with Interventional Cardiologist David Leeman, MD, and asked him how many stents he would need. “He said, ‘you’re not getting any stents’ and told me I had multiple blockages of varying degrees,” Maine said. He was scheduled for open heart surgery a few days later.

The Strength of an Idea

Up until this time, Maine said he was not aware he had any heart issues, although he has a strong history of heart disease on his maternal side, which included several fatal heart attacks among relatives.

“For whatever reason, I convinced myself I was in great shape and I had been in great shape all my life, and I spent 30 years in the military, and it just wasn’t going to happen to me,” he said. 

During the weeks when he was having symptoms, Maine said he told himself he was just out of shape. He even went to the gym to work out on an elliptical machine, all the while experiencing chest tension.

As a helicopter pilot in the Coast Guard, Maine said he now knows that his denial was actually something that aviators refer to as the “strength of an idea.” It describes the notion that if the way you see yourself and the world is so strong, “tons of evidence to the contrary can come in and you’ll just ignore it and try to fit it into your life, because the strength of the idea is so strong,” he said.

While awaiting surgery in the Cardiac Critical Care Unit (CCU) at Cape Cod Hospital, Dr. Masroor, and his surgical team visited with Maine. “It was a nice check-in and to get to know them,” Maine said. His surgery was on a Tuesday morning and he describes every aspect of it as “a great experience.”

“I spent two and a half days in CCU and Kathy Delaney (RN) was just superb,” he said. “My day nurse after surgery was Shawn Seim (RN) and he was superb as well.”

“The Grace of God” and Quality Care

On the day of his surgery, he said “the operating room staff before the lights went out was very light and very reassuring.” The next thing he knew, he was in CCU that evening.

“The first memory I have was the night nurse, Ray Gagnon (RN) putting ice chips in my mouth and from that point on, I had just such great nursing care from the whole team, day and night,” Maine said.

Dr. Masroor visited after the surgery and through his hospital stay, and everyone told Maine he was way ahead of time on his recovery.

“But, again, the grace of God combined with quality care from folks at the hospital, it was amazing,” Maine said.

Maine and his family moved permanently to Cape Cod in 2014, after living here on and off since 1983. Aside from the births of one of his daughters and two grandchildren, he had not had much experience with either Cape hospital. When he was confronted with the need for open heart surgery, he asked a friend from church, who is now his cardiologist, John Hostetter, MD, if he should have it done at one of the Boston institutions.

“He assured me that Dr. Masroor and his team, and the team at the hospital are Boston quality (the Cape Cod Hospital cardiac surgery program is affiliated with Beth Israel Lahey Health in Boston), and there was no reason for me to leave the Cape,” Maine said. “A lot of the members of the cardiac team do spend time in Boston, so you get the sense that you’re getting Boston care here on Cape Cod.”

Maine stressed again how his comfort level with the experience extended to all those involved in his care – from Dr. Masroor to everyone else he came into contact with.

“Everyone I encountered; the housekeeper that came in every morning, the PT guy John (Corsino), the orderly who took me downstairs to the OR. Everybody was not only professional – you would expect that – but upbeat and friendly. Even the maintenance guy who came in to fix the toilet asked me how I was doing.”

When he recalls how seamlessly everything went, Maine said he is grateful he had the surgery locally, so his family and friends were able to come by and visit him. He was also glad that, when he had a slight arrhythmia episode shortly after returning home from surgery, Dr. Masroor and his physician’s assistants Chris Ryan and Adam Cowell were close by to quickly address it.

Maine is now walking up to one and a half miles every day and will soon start the Cardiac Rehabilitation program at Falmouth Hospital. He has a weekend hiking trip scheduled for July and fully expects to be on it.