by LARRY HAGMAN
Two Mondays later, he and comedian Richard Lewis picked me up and took me to a meeting. It was held at someone’s home. There were about thirty guys in a room, many of whom I knew or recognized. The meeting was simple. One guy started it by reading “How It Works,” or the twelve steps to sobriety, from the AA Blue Book, then said his name and described his week since the last meeting, staying within the three-minute time limit, which gave everyone a chance to speak.
“I’m glad to be here,” I said when it was my turn. “Dallas dragged me in. I haven’t had a drink in nearly three years and I don’t plan to.”
It went around the room like that until the last person had shared his story. Then all of us stood up and said the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.”
Since that day those Monday night meetings have become an essential part of my life and I’ve said the prayer every morning after I brush my teeth while looking at a framed photo of my liver donor, which I have courtesy of the National Enquirer. It’s proved to be one of the most important prayers I’ve ever known. As soon as I began meditating on it, it opened up a whole new avenue of living—compassion, strength, conviction, and wonder. And of course, at that time as I wondered whether or not I’d get a donor liver, I needed all of that and more.
Chapter Twenty-eight
At the hospital, I’d been given a beeper and told it would go off when a compatible liver became available. As Maj and I drove to Malibu, we made several different plans for getting to the hospital quickly when the time arrived. In lieu of having a specific date, we prepared down to the smallest details, from packing bags and writing down important phone numbers to keeping a helicopter at the Camarillo airport on call.
A few days later we drove up to Heaven. As we passed through the front gate, my beeper went off. Maj looked at me; I thought, That didn’t take long. I called in immediately, but they said it wasn’t them. It might’ve been a wrong number. Later that afternoon the beeper went off again at the same spot on the hill and I figured out it was the radar tower. The microwaves triggered the beeper. It happened often to my “fuzz buster” when I drove up and down that road.
As we waited, Maj and I tried to enjoy every moment. We spent time with the people we loved. Our kids and grandchildren came up to the house. Family and friends called night and day, including my sister, Heller, whose talks with Maj helped keep her strong and positive.
One day I was in the Jacuzzi with Richard and asked what his mother had been up to lately. He laughed.
“Lar, my mother died a year ago,” he said. “She’s having lunch with your mother today.”
I knew that. It was my memory going as a result of my liver not working properly.
About two weeks after he’d diagnosed the cancer, Makowka talked to me about the possibility of performing an intermediate procedure to buy more time while we waited. There were risks, none of them pleasant. Before making a decision, I asked if I could go to Vancouver with Patrick on a fishing trip at the end of July.
“Sure, go on your fishing trip,” Makowka said. “By the time you get back we’ll have a recommendation.”
* * *
I made arrangements in case I had to get back to L.A. in a hurry, but the private jet I had on standby throughout the four-day trip never had to budge from the tarmac. Instead I had a wonderful, relaxing time with Patrick even though I didn’t catch a single fish. It was like all our previous fishing excursions—a nonstop laugh riot, only this time minus the booze.
When I got back, Makowka told me that he wanted to do the procedure. On August 5, he performed a chemoembolization, a onetime procedure that killed the tumor with chemo and blocked the blood vessel feeding it. I came out of the hourlong operation fine. I kept a positive attitude. But it was impossible to predict how long my health would last. It was only a matter of time. As Makowka said, there was only one sure thing about my condition—I needed a new liver.
* * *
“The wait is hard,” Dallas Taylor told me. “It’s like being a condemned man on death row waiting to hear if the governor will grant a reprieve.”
In 1990, Dallas had been in the same position I was in. He wore a beeper and hoped a matching donor liver could be found before it was too late. Makowka had performed his transplant surgery too. Dallas told me what to expect from the operation and was a great inspiration.
So was David Crosby, who filled me in on the details of the seven-hour transplant operation he underwent at UCLA in November 1994. I got together with David for lunch and he proudly lifted up his shirt and showed me his scar, a huge incision that indicated the surgeons split you open as wide as a frog in biology class. He also told me about the side effects, like temporary pain and discomfort, your lack of immunity, the danger of rejection, and how a buildup of fluids cause your scrotum to blow up about ten times its normal size.
Nothing I heard during those pep talks scared me. Long after the operation was over, some people said I’d seemed frightened, but I don’t remember feeling it. I didn’t want to be in pain. Nor did I want to die. But the operation didn’t scare me. Death isn’t the end of everything. It’s just another step.
“Did you have your tour yet?” Dallas asked one day.
No, that came next. About a week after the chemoembolization, I familiarized myself with what was going to happen when I was operated on. At Makowka’s suggestion, I toured the hospital’s ICU ward, where I’d be taken after my surgery, and I met Leonard’s entire staff, from nurses to psychiatrists. I had no idea of the number of people involved.
There was also a slender black man who stood in the background. His name was Dan Simpson. He had an air of elegance that made him seem different. I asked what he did.
“I am the harvester,” he said.
“Harvester?”
“Yes, I go out and talk to the family of the potential donor and try to persuade them to let me bring back the organ.”
I didn’t get to know him much beyond that brief conversation, but I never forgot the profound effect meeting him had on me. Maybe because this gentle soul was the closest anyone waiting for a transplant ever got to the most important person in the whole procedure, and of course you never meet that one. The donor.
* * *
It’s worth emphasizing I had no idea when, or even if, I’d ever receive a suitable liver. But we continued making preparations at the hospital, like special security, ensuring Maj would have her own room while I was there, and protecting the privacy of my hospital records from the gossip rags. It’s irritating we had to go to such lengths, but if not, we were sure everything from my X rays to urine samples would end up in the tabloids.
Then on April 14, my beeper went off. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and Maj and I were in bed, reading. She bolted up and somehow her sister Bebe, who was in the guest house, heard it too, and everyone started clucking around the house. I called in to the hospital.
“Sorry, Mr. Hagman. I dialed the wrong number.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said, shrugging at Maj.
When I told Maj it had been a wrong number, the two of us sighed almost simultaneously, clicked off the lights, and went to sleep.
Eight days later I was up early. While Maj visited with my sister, Heller, who was in from New York, I went down to shoot on the skeet range Maj had built for me down the hill near the helicopter pad. I hit my share of clay pigeons, which made it an excellent morning. Then it got even better. I was in the middle of the driveway on my way back to the house when Maj called out that Leonard Makowka was on the phone. He said he had good news and bad news.
“Oh?” I said.
“The bad news is that I’d planned to call you today to invite you to go fishing next weekend in Vancouver. I heard the salmon are running.”
“I was just up there. They sure weren’t running then.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t invite
you—not this weekend anyway.”
“Why not?”
“That’s the good news. We have a perfect liver for you. It’s on its way. We’re sending a helicopter for you. Can you be ready in half an hour?”
I’d been on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) list thirty-three days. Now I had less than thirty-three minutes to get to the hospital.
Right then I paused, the first of countless such pauses I’ve made since, to think about the person whose liver would soon be mine. You aren’t permitted to know anything about that person. Nothing. Not whether they’re male or female, black or white, rich or poor, happy or unhappy, and I think that’s good. It’s proof that we’re all the same, all here to help one another if we can. I thanked that person profusely for signing their donor card.
The helicopter touched down on the landing pad beyond the driveway. The pilot smiled and helped stow our small bags. Within two minutes, we were airborne, heading south. I’ll always remember my little sister, looking so worried, standing on the driveway and waving to me as we flew toward L. A. Maj and I held hands the whole way and looked at the scenery below. It was so pretty. I turned to Maj at one point and said, “What a nice day.”
Then we landed at the hospital. The entire flight had taken twenty-six minutes.
At that point, it was kind of like being in the theater and hearing the stage manager say, “Show time.” Michel met me at the helicopter pad and took me on a roundabout way into the hospital to avoid any paparazzi who might’ve been tipped off that I was on my way. Then began the long process of being prepped for major surgery. Between 7:30 and 8 P.M., the helicopter landed with the harvester and his precious cargo. Maj was chatting with Michel while I talked with Richard on my cell phone when a young man came in and told me he was there to take me down to the operating room.
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “My driver’s here.”
My attitude couldn’t have been better. I was in a great mood, joking with Maj, not troubled by an ounce of fear. On the way to the OR, I pulled the sheet over my head so nobody could snap a picture of me. I kept wiggling my feet so they wouldn’t think I was a corpse. In the OR, I was given an enema. I’ve heard of high colonics, but this was ridiculous. Neither Dallas nor David had mentioned it. I hoped that enema wasn’t going to be my last thought. Because then I got a shot, the first round of anesthesia, and before anyone could tell me to count backward, I was out of there.
* * *
It was about 11 P.M. when Makowka actually began the operation. During the sixteen-hour surgery, much longer than originally planned, he played music to keep everyone’s attention sharp. Later, he told me the first song he’d played, as he made the incision, had been the theme from Dallas.
Periodically Leonard or one of the other doctors left the room and gave Maj an update. It’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen in the operating room, but with each report he assured Maj everything was going well. The cancer hadn’t spread and the new liver appeared to be a perfect match. There were a few minor complications. Leonard had to rebuild the bile duct connection to my liver, and he needed three hours to clean out gallstones. Earlier, I’d asked him to save the stones so my artist friend Barton Benes could turn them into a ring, and he happily told Maj that I’d be able to wear my ring.
Finally, late in the afternoon on August 23, Makowka came out and told Maj the operation was over. The surgery had been successful and I had been taken to recovery. But he added the cautionary words she already knew from previous discussions: I wasn’t out of the woods yet. The first forty-eight hours after an operation like this were crucial and would indicate my chances for making it out of the hospital.
* * *
I remember opening my eyes and seeing Makowka and Maj staring down at me. The operation had finished five hours earlier. I was groggy from the anesthesia. I had a tube in my nose, one down my mouth, two in my side, one in each arm, one in my groin, a catheter on my dick, and I was on an aspirator. I was also connected to an automatic blood pressure machine. I remembered Dallas had mentioned being frustrated by his inability to speak, but I drew on more than twenty years of not talking on Sundays and relaxed.
“You’re doing great,” Makowka said.
Then I connected with Maj.
“You look just like a machine,” she said.
I made up some mantras and meditated on my favorite mental image, a field of mustard in flower, that wonderful bright yellow with a red rose in the middle. I concentrated on breathing. I’d take two deep breaths, then drift off into a kind of sleep. I felt in a state of limbo.
At some point they gave me a piece of paper and pen and asked me to draw a Texas star. I thought I did, but when I saw it later it looked more like an amoeba. Makowka asked if I would autograph the picture, but he was just joking. He told me I’d come through the operation with flying colors and to enjoy the rest.
I drifted through the heavily medicated first couple of days in ICU, spending most of that hazy time focused on my celestial song. Everyone has their own unique song, an inner melody that fuses each of us to the deep, modulating, harmonious hum of the celestial orchestra that’s the collective energy of everything that’s ever lived and ever going to live. It’s our life force. The power of the universe. Think of the aurora borealis. When I see those lights, I can’t help but say, “My God, I’m part of that.”
Later, when I told Dallas about that song, he said, “Oh yeah, that’s your muse.”
When I asked if he had experienced anything like that, he said, “Sooner or later, everybody does.”
The days I spent in ICU meditating on my song gave me a feeling that was ecstatically happy and familiar—and it confirmed what I’d always suspected, that every one of us living creatures is part of a collective energy that is also ecstatically happy and familiar. The culmination of that energy is love. It’s with us now, it always has been, and it always will be. Every one of us has this familiarity. We know it. The problem is, we bury it under so much apprehension and worry.
But on medication I was able to blend into the bigger picture, the way I had done on my first acid trip. I also glimpsed over the edge of this level of existence into the next, and there was that person again, welcoming me but indicating it was not yet the time to cross over. Yet I was allowed to understand there was more to life. This was not the end. There were more levels, an infinite number of levels, of existence, each one adding to the hum of the cosmic orchestra, as if we’re always spiraling upward until we reach a state of atomic bliss, like the pleasant chime of a triangle being played.
Every religion that I know of tries to figure out the same question—what’s the meaning of life?—and each one offers a different path to the same answer, which is love.
The meaning of life is love.
So don’t worry.
Be happy.
Feel good.
Chapter Twenty-nine
After two days in ICU, they took the breathing tube out of my mouth, allowing me to talk. According to Maj, who stayed by my side, I said the same thing over and over.
“I am so lucky,” I said.
“Yes, you are.”
“I love people,” I said in a singsongy voice.
“I know you do.”
I also talked about starting a rock-and-roll band with Crosby and Dallas. I wanted to call it the Grateful Livers and we could play my celestial song.
After two more days in ICU, I was moved to my own room, which was filled with healing crystals sent by Linda Gray. I constantly asked people to massage my aching, itching, swollen feet. Unfortunately I couldn’t request the same treatment for my scrotum, which was the size of my head.
They told me I was a model patient. I let the nurses poke me, check my pulse, and keep me clean. They started explaining the complex medications they were giving me but I was still too woozy to make any sense of what they said. The next day they got me out of bed and forced me to sit in a chair, which was really difficult because I was
so weak. I wondered if that’s what it felt like to be old. They wanted me to try to walk, but I didn’t have the strength.
“It’s going to take a lot of effort,” one of the nurses said. “It’s not easy.”
At some point that day Maj had discovered a paparazzo dressed as a doctor in the hallway near my room. He’d gotten past the hospital’s security and she recognized him. It turned out he had a small camera. My own security people got rid of him. But the incident made me feel helpless and paranoid. That night I asked Maj to sleep in my room. The nurse helped her pull a mattress in there and she slept on the floor next to my bed while holding my hand.
Later that night, well past midnight, I had the TV on and was watching Steve McQueen in the movie The Hunter. I’d known Steve slightly, one motorcycle guy to another. But the tenacity, strength, and will to live I saw in his performance in that movie struck a chord in me that the nurses hadn’t been able to reach when they’d wanted me to walk. Inspired, I struggled out of bed and reached for my IV stand. The noise woke Maj, who said, “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Let me call a nurse,” she said.
“No, just help me get ahold of this IV thing and open the door.”
A few moments later I was out the door, walking. It was more like an unsteady waddle with my scrotum swinging to and fro, throwing me off balance, but at least I was out of bed and moving into the hall.
“What’s going on?” the duty nurse asked.
“I’m taking a walk,” I said.
I trudged down the hall muttering to Steve, “Thanks, buddy.”
From then on, I improved daily. The only pain that got in my way was psychic. I was overloaded by the feeling I could read minds and control what happened on television. I watched André Agassi play in the finals of the U.S. Open and all the action looked to be in such slow motion that I could actually help him think about his shots. Lots of good it did, since he lost. The same thing happened when I watched baseball. I could actually steer the ball where I wanted it to go. I should’ve been connected to a Vegas sports book, because I knew all the results ahead of time.
