A Change of Heart : Bypass Surgery Persuaded Don Luke to Quit a Sedentary Lifestyle and Tackle Triathlons

For months, Don Luke, 46, had kept his emotions in check as his heart steadily deteriorated. He knew death was a possibility, but he told no one of his fears.

“That was one of the toughest things of all,” he said. “Being brave. Putting up a front. But I figured that was a guy’s job. That’s what we do.”

Early on the morning of Sept. 14 of last year, just hours before he was to undergo a massive operation that lasted nearly six hours, the armor cracked.

He sneaked into his garage in the early light and ran his hand along a fender of his 1952 MG, a car he had built himself. A car he loved.

“I covered the car up and said goodby to it,” Luke said. “It sounds silly now, but that was the only time I broke down. I couldn’t do it in front of people. I did it in front of my car. I said goodby because I wasn’t sure I’d ever see it again. I think at that moment I was saying goodby to a lot of things.”

Five months later, Luke’s wife Becky stood near the Rose Bowl, her heart pounding wildly. Dozens of competitors in a triathlon already had roared by. And she waited, much more than just anxiously.

Finally, out of the morning mist came her husband, legs hammering the pavement, arms pumping furiously, eyes bulging and sweat covering his body.

Don Luke was very much alive. More alive than ever.

But the 1952 MG was gone.

He had to sell it because just two weeks before his operation, Luke had lost his job as a national marketing manager for a laboratory supply company.

Luke’s heart problems showed themselves early. A heart attack in 1972 at the age of 27 while Luke was cross-country skiing at 10,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies was much more than a subtle hint. Doctors told him at the time, though, that it was a freak attack. No heart disease was detected.

Soon, he returned to a normal life.

But a move to Southern California from Colorado in 1987 brought pain.

“It was gradual,” Luke recalled. “A feeling of discomfort now and then. Nothing unbearable. It was on and off pain.”

After a few months, he went to a doctor. Treadmill tests and other heart examinations revealed deteriorating arteries. Luke had never smoked or drank, but his doctors said the likely cause of the degenerating heart tissue was cigarette smoke. Second-hand cigarette smoke.

“My parents both smoked two or three packs a day. I grew up in a house full of cigarette smoke,” said Luke, of Newbury Park.

With medication--mostly nitroglycerin tablets--doctors told him, the problem might be corrected. It wasn’t.

“I just got worse and worse,” he said. “I found myself unable to do anything, even ordinary things. I was tired all the time. I was 45 and led a very sedentary life. I thought everyone must feel that way.

“But later, I couldn’t climb a staircase in my house without popping a nitro pill. That’s when I knew the medication wasn’t working.”

Surgery, it was determined, was Luke’s only hope. The less radical procedure of angioplasty, in which the arteries are re-opened with air-filled balloons, was ruled out. Luke’s heart was too badly damaged.

So on a cool day last September, Luke bid goodby to his car and headed for the Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, not sure that he would come out again.

The operation, headed by Dr. Mohammad Gharavi, went smoothly. Luke spent nearly two hours hooked into a heart-lung machine that kept the heart tissue alive as Gharavi carved it open, rebuilt the arteries and put the puzzle back together.

“I remember waking up in the recovery room and thinking how much it hurt,” Luke said. “I thought to myself, ‘It feels like all of my ribs are broken.’ Then I realized that all of my ribs were broken.”

A 24-inch long scar runs along Duke’s left leg, marking the place where doctors removed arteries to use in his heart. It’s a big scar, to be sure. But not the first one you would notice on his body. That honor belongs to the one on his chest. And people do notice it.

Because three or four times a week he hits a public swimming pool in Camarillo, pushing himself to exhaustion with powerful strokes as he churns out 1,200 meters per session. From there, Luke heads to a gym where he lifts weights and pumps the pedals of a stationary bike until the sweat flows freely. Sometimes, he laughs.

“I remember that before the surgery, I went maybe 15 years without doing anything,” Luke said. “I mean 15 years where I can’t recall ever even breaking a sweat during exercise.”

So how could it be, then, that this man who had his chest and heart laid open in the operating room found himself just 20 weeks later pounding through a triathlon in Pasadena?

“Because I became determined, in the weeks after the operation, to change my life,” Luke said. “I became determined never to let this happen to me again. So right away, just a few weeks after the operation, I set a goal of competing in a triathlon. I didn’t tell anybody for a long time. I just started training.”

He had participated in countless hours of post-operative rehabilitation sessions at the hospital, both physical and mental. What he discovered during the talk sessions with patients who had undergone similar surgery was that all of them set their goals of recovery very low.

“When I ran in the triathlon, most of the other guys were still walking,” Luke said. “They’d talk about how great they felt, about these long walks they took.”

Luke walked too. To the starting line of the triathlon. And then he proceeded to run three miles, race a bicycle for 10 miles and then plunge into a pool for a quarter-mile swim. He finished the three events in 1 hour 18 minutes 56 seconds, earning fifth place among 15 competitors in his age division (45-49).

He continues to train hard, running and cycling and swimming and climbing the steep slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains near his home. He will compete in a few five- and 10-kilometer races in the next month but had to scrap plans to run in a half-marathon when he strained a knee recently during training, not a common ailment among those who have recently undergone major heart surgery.

“I have always been able to set very high goals for myself,” Luke said. “I like to establish a goal that is seemingly out of reach, one that appears to most people to be impossible. But I know the difference between impossible and something that is attainable through hard work.”

With that same attitude, Luke has turned his attention in recent weeks to another quest: finding a job.

“After the surgery, I focused on getting better and pushing myself as far as I could go physically,” Luke said. “It has been great. But it doesn’t pay the bills.”

He said he will put forth the same effort in his bid to return to the job market, but he already has found the lingering recession a tough barrier.

“Every position I apply for in the upper brackets of marketing or sales, jobs I am very qualified for, I face the realization that there are 150 other guys applying for the position. Guys who have all the same qualifications that I do.”

Not likely. Not if you measure a man’s heart. Especially a new and improved heart.