JUST over two years ago, writer and broadcaster Bill Long needed, a new heart. He kept two intimate accounts, a video diary and a written journal, of a year spent waiting for that donor heart in a race against time.
Soon to be broadcast on RTE television, A Change Of Heart shows him during that critical year plagued with heart attacks and uncertainty: "For me there was the daily nightmare of wondering which would come first - the fatal attack or the new heart; a kind of Russian Roulette." Of the 132 people who have had a heart transplant in Ireland since it began here in 1986, as many as 112 were men.
Before his heart transplant Bill Long had seven heart attacks and four bypasses. Now he is perfect heartwise, but has osteoporosis which leaves him 80 per cent physically immobilised. He sees it as simply another obstacle to be overcome: "I celebrate my transplant and my osteoporosis. Everything is positive. Everything.
His heart transplant was the "best "thing that ever happened" to him. He urges men who find themselves in cardiac wards to try to have a philosophical attitude and a sense of humour: "Try not to get uptight. I'm not a religious person but I am a pretty spiritual person. It's important to give yourself over to some power beyond yourself. I might come out the other end. I don't remember a moment when I was ever afraid." Bill Long was struck that some men who needed only minor surgery were traumatised. He was amazed so many men couldn't cope. Observing that a lot of men in their late 40s or 50s have taken early retirement, he is critical of their decision ("On the scrap heap. Nonsense. Go back to work.") He says a doctor advised him that nobody he knew ever died of overwork but a lot of men die by apathy.
No fear of that for Bill Long. With over 200 appearances on Sunday Miscellany and his history of Irish lighthouses, Bright Light. White later, behind him, he made a documentary for RTE only five weeks after leaving hospital. Since his transplant, he has written one novel and started a second. He writes pieces for Radio Ireland and continues to lecture privately in homiletics.
John McColgan produced and directed the video diary. A remarkable account of courage and humanity, it works wonderfully as documentary and diary. It is extraordinary to watch a person in such a vulnerable situation utterly dependent upon the expertise of surgeon Maurice Neligan and his team at the Mater Hospital in Dublin. You see the new heart arrive, iced, living and visibly healthy. Bill Long's voiceover as he looks at himself, ribopened, incredulous that he is observing himself, makes compelling viewing.
Asked to describe himself, Bill Long says that he is "a man who is not afraid to burn his bridges. A man who at all times eschews the use of the safety net." Safety net is a key phrase for him. It occurs in the book, the video diary and now in conversation: "Men want assurances. But life is all about, mystery and miracle - a swimmer going way out past where it is safe to go.
He sees himself as a man who, at 65, has come "wonderfully to a point where I love myself". Not in a narcissistic way, he began to tolerate, himself, then to like himself and finally to love himself: "That's where it becomes really possible to love other people." He's very conscious of what a two minute talk on radio can do for people who are listening. One such talk on suffering resulted in his receiving 400 letters.
He believes that Irish men don't cry enough: "I think it's a wonderful thing to cry. I cry most weeks if not most days. I cry constantly when I hear of children being maltreated. When I heard Noel Browne had died I went up to my room and cried because I loved the man." The book, also called A Change Of Heart, complements the video. It records one emission of expletives missing from the video footage and explains why no words were spoken when he was in the garden of the Mater Hospital subsequent to the operation.
"Silently, I thank God for seeing me through all my adventures and misadventures of the heart: thank him for bringing me here to this garden to hear, and see, and smell all the beautiful things I thought I might never experience again.
"When John asks me to speak to the camera I cannot. I am too emotional, too full of a mixture of joy and sadness to say anything. It will have to be a voice over when we come to editing this part of the film."