I failed my very first day on the job. And it wasnt like I hit reply all on a rude email about a client or didnt get a FedEx off in time. Weve all had those kind of bad days. No, this was life or death.
It was 28 years ago, but I still remember the events of that day like it was in slow motion. They say that happens...
On quiet nights, with only faces of the people whose lives Ive changed forever (Arnhild, Jone, Karoline, Jo, Nils) dancing in the darkness, its hard to forgive myself. Sometimes I simply feel broken. But then Im reminded of the circumstances.
I thought I was ready, but nine months of training couldnt prepare me for the events of July 16, 1984.
The air was electric, pulsing. There was a bright flash of light, chaos. I remember hearing screams and everywhere I looked, seeing blood.
I froze. I didnt finish sealing the chamber in time, and suddenly, bad gas was mixing with the good. The oxygen supply was dangerously low and the pumps were working over time. We got sick.
The project was temporarily abandoned. All we could do afterward was put in half measures, patches solving one problem that caused another somewhere else.
But, after the fallout, instead of being fired, my boss has stood by me ever since.
I am actor Nils Hognestads heart, and he forgives me.
We have undergone three open-heart surgeries since his birth. He was a blue baby, born with Tetralogy of Fallot a congenital heart defect. The first time they opened his ribs to the sky, we were three years old.
You see, I was supposed to close up the wall between my left and right ventricle, so that when red blood comes in from the lungs, it doesnt mix with the blue blood thats no good to anyone. But when Nils was born, open it stayed.
His dad Jone worked in shipping in Norway, where were from. A transfer brought the family to Vancouver though, and, after swapping seasides, his parents carried us into Childrens Hospital for the first surgery.
Nils body was too little, but doctors had waited as many years as they could before operating to clean up the mess I had made.
Afterward, I felt fine, but Nils rib cage was crooked and overlapping, healing like a Sierra mountain range. The next time doctors broke the bones, they left me alone and I watched as they reset his sternum. We were five years old.
Doctors told his parents that this was an exciting time for our condition, and that technologies for heart surgery were growing rapidly. But so was Nils.
By age 13, he was fainting all the time. We had a new problem, but Nils refused to tell anyone. It wasnt until he blacked out while racing bikes with a friend that his secret came out.
The early years of strain, before the hole could be sealed up, had caused my pulmonary valve to completely wear away. We were rushed in for our third open-heart surgery. It was Nils first year in high school.
After the operation, I inspected the plastic invader that they had put in me, and knew that this would not be the last of it. This valve had a life expectancy of maybe 15 years. Nils had a life expectancy of five times that. He also had a life.
Nils had developed a passion for acting. He got on with a kids talent agency in Vancouver and tried his hand at the trifecta: acting, modeling and singing. I could feel his excitement when he stepped on stage. I beat faster.
Nils excelled in the drama program at Handsworth in North Vancouver and went on to study further at Ryerson in Toronto, and then LAMDA in London.
Nils didnt really notice when our old valve slowly began to leak.
He carried on with his voice-over career. Anyone with a penchant for gambling hears Nils heralding Poker Stars as the worlds largest online poker and gambling site.
Then, in 2011, Kokanee beer fans voted to kill off the curmudgeonly ranger. And, in a Starsky-and-Hutchesque turn, Nils and his golden hair appealed to voters as one half of a new ranger duo Glacier and Fresh. You can see Fresh in the upcoming Kokanee feature film, The Movie Out Here a buddy comedy à la Hot Tub Time Machine, with a BC spin.
But in May of 2012, just before filming began, Nils was resting on the patio in his wooded back yard. The sun was beaming bright shafts between the leaves, and his mother, Arnhild, was enjoying the warmth in a chair next to him. But Nils body was cold. Wrapped in a wool blanket, he shivered and shook.
He told her it was the flu. He didnt want to ruin Mothers Day.
A week later, though, he could barely lift his head, and his parents rushed us to emergency at St. Pauls, terrified. I knew it was my fault, but it took the doctors two visits to discover the bacteria teaming inside me.
Nils had developed an elusive bacterial endocarditis. They could see a growth clinging to the site of the old valve already scheduled to come out soon. His gallbladder, kidneys and liver were septic and nine weeks of antibiotics ensued.
But he responded, and learned to administer the medicine by IV through a line directly into his heart. (If he ever gets cast as a doctor, hell know exactly how to act).
And his schedule was full. He got a doctors note and took his liquid cocktail on a flight across Canada to some friends weddings. Then he started filming the movie.
But by June, sitting in the office of a naturopath in North Vancouver, he cried. He was tired. I was functioning at a mere 40 per cent. His body was riddled with allergies and weakened by the antibiotics.
Our next surgery was less than a year away and we were being told the severity of the endocarditis meant doctors couldnt do the revolutionary procedure we had been preparing for. They would have to go in the old-fashioned way through the chest.
But his body still hadnt fully rebuilt from the last time they cut it open, 15 years ago. The recovery time for a Sapien transcatheter valve procedure, though, is more like a week. So he fought the doctors until they agreed to do it this way.
Just after his movie premieres, we get our new pulmonary valve. And this one should last 20 years.
I can hear him telling all this to a reporter, sitting on the couch in his parents living room. He pulls out a video on his iPad to show her how theyll replace the old valve by running a lead up through the femoral artery in his thigh and into my right ventricle. Then theyll send a state-of-the-art valve made of stainless steel and cow parts up along it, and, via a balloon, puff it out into place.
The reporter asks him what he would tell children who are just starting down the same road. He says, with his chest bisected by scars, that he feels like the last of his kind when hes an old man, kids will be amazed that they used to cut people open to do surgery.
She asks him if he feels like this upcoming procedure is his choice, and he says it feels more like something that is just happening to him.
She asks, if he could write a letter to his heart, what would it say?
And after a long silence, he says that he loves me, and that he cares for me, and that Im perfect the way I am.
And I break just a little bit more.
Nils Hognestad bravely told his story to raise awareness for BCs Heart and Stroke month, running the month of February (HeartAndStroke.bc.ca). The Movie Out Here débuts in Western Canada March 1 (TheMovieOutHere.ca).
