Many of you will likely have seen the update on Mrs. T that I posted in this space on Monday. It was, as is our custom, a cheery, reasonably optimistic description of what happened to her over the weekend as she awaited the double lung transplant that we hope will save her life.

It was also misleading—deliberately so. That has also been our custom.

No more. Mrs. T, who is a very private person (that’s why I refer to her as “Mrs. T” in this space) and thus has been reluctant to be entirely frank about her illness in public, decided last night that it is time at last for me to start writing with complete candor about the increasingly desperate state of her health.

So…here goes.

To begin with, her condition has been declining steadily for the past couple of years, and that decline picked up speed a few months ago. She is much sicker now than when I first wrote about her need for a transplant in 2017. Except for doctor visits, she’s been housebound since late summer—she spends virtually all of her time in bed or on the living-room couch—and her vital signs have gradually sunk to the low side of what for her long ago became “normal.”

On Saturday evening, her blood oxygen saturation level, the statistic that is the most critical indicator of her minute-to-minute condition, became alarmingly unstable, then plummeted downward, from 75% to 40%. (One hundred percent is normal.) We knew this to be a possible sign that the right ventricle of her heart was starting to decompensate and fail—something that typically happens sooner or later to patients in the end stage of primary pulmonary hypertension, the rare and fatal illness from which Mrs. T suffers. Our standing instructions are to call 911 should her sat level suddenly drop by a significant amount and fail to rebound. We did so, and an ambulance arrived within minutes and rushed us to the emergency room of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, a mile from our front door.

Twenty-four nerve-racking hours later, Mrs. T was transferred to the intensive-care unit around the corner, where the doctors were unable to bring her blood oxygen up to a safe level. For this reason, they decided to hook her up to an ECMO machine, a new kind of heart-lung machine that continuously oxygenates a patient’s blood supply.

What I didn’t tell you on Monday is that the use of an ECMO machine is a last-resort measure. Moreover, the ICU doctors were far from certain that it would solve her problem. In fact, they warned me—not in so many words but straightforwardly, which was what I wanted—that there was a good chance she was about to die.

As I sat in the corridor waiting for the machine to be connected to her body, I recalled a pair of numbers that everyone who needs a transplant knows by heart:

• As of this hour, 113,000 Americans are waiting for a transplant that could save their lives.

• Roughly twenty of them will die waiting today, and another twenty tomorrow and the day after that, because of a chronic shortage of donor organs nationwide.

I thought: Is the woman I love about to become one of those people?

Then one of the doctors came out to me, smiled broadly, and said, “It’s working. The machine is hooked up. Her oxygen level is 100%.”

No sooner did he speak those words than my stomach heaved, and I came close to vomiting on the floor. Then I started crying.

It is not even remotely true to say that Mrs. T is out of danger. Her doctors believe that she will probably have to remain in the ICU, hooked up to an ECMO machine, until a compatible pair of donor lungs finally becomes available—or until her body wears out and she dies, which will happen sooner or later.

Meanwhile, she is waiting as patiently as she can, suffering as she does so (as has been the case for several years) from nonstop, at times excruciating pain that can only be eased with opiates, relieving herself through a Foley catheter because she is too fragile to use a urinal or a bedside commode, unable to do much of anything but read, watch movies, play electronic solitaire, and post the odd message on Facebook.

I spend several hours sitting with her each day, though there isn’t much room to spare in her tiny cubicle, most of which is now occupied by the half-dozen units that comprise the complicated machine that is keeping her alive. (At right is a snapshot taken by Mrs. T that shows part of the ECMO machine at work. That’s her blood flowing through the red hose.)

I’ve said it before, but I can’t possibly say it often enough: Mrs. T is tougher and more gallant than anyone I know. She’s not going down without a fight. But she’s been fighting for a long, long time, and she’s tired. It’s true that she’s been moved to the very top of New York-Presbyterian’s lung-transplant priority list as a result of her being put on the ECMO machine. Unfortunately, it’s far from a sure thing that she’ll receive a compatible pair of donor lungs in time to keep her alive. In the six months since the New York-Presbyterian transplant team told her that she was sick enough to start receiving organ offers, we’ve gotten only two Big Calls, both of them dry runs that didn’t pan out.

The rest—so far—is silence.

*  *  *

You now know exactly what’s up with us. The bark, as they say, is off. Yes, we’re coping as best as we can, and we’ll continue to do so. There’s nothing the two of us love more than being together, and there’s nothing we want more than to be able to return to our beloved Sanibel Island, walk on the beach hand in hand, and listen to the soothing sound of the surf. We’re tired of keeping our cellphones turned on 24/7 in the hope of getting a Big Call that will change our lives. We’re tired of pain and fear and middle-of-the-night crises. We’re ready for a change.

We also know—really, really know—that in order for these things to end, an unknown person of short stature with two good lungs and A-positive-compatible blood will have to die, sooner rather than later.

That is a terrible fact with which to live day in and day out, at least as terrible as Mrs. T’s grueling everyday suffering. Yet it is something both of us have learned, however reluctantly, to accept. It is the plain truth about organ donation, a cruel truth—and a beautiful one.

To all of you out there who have sent us your good wishes in recent weeks, we bless you for them. Your messages are among the few things that can put a smile on her weary face when she’s having one of her bad days. But please permit me to ask you for one more thing: if you haven’t signed up to be an organ donor, do it now.

Mrs. T and a hundred thousand other sick Americans need your help. Their lives are in your hands.

In today’s Wall Street Journal I offer a brief summary of key trends in American theater during the past decade, part of an ongoing series of reports by the paper’s arts critics. Here’s an excerpt:

Ten years ago, close observers of the theater scene would likely have agreed that most of the main figures in American theater, actors excluded, were men. But things were already changing in 2010, and I don’t know anyone who’d make such a claim today. To the contrary, American theater is now well on the way to becoming a woman’s game….

Whatever the reasons, the shift is here to stay. So is an equally consequential shift that is, however, in no way desirable: The Broadway-style American musical has entered a period of creative decline….

Read the whole thing here.

The forty-third episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading. Alas, I was under the weather when it came time to tape our biweekly chat, but Peter and Elisabeth handled things with their accustomed class.

Here’s American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings: 

Today, the critics talk to Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones about the interplay between Broadway and Chicago theatre, discussing the numerous tryouts that move from the Windy City to New York and the role of a critic in the realm of new and changing work. The critics end with a conversation about recent shows they’ve seen, including Jagged Little Pill, Fefu and Her Friends, and Sleeping Car Porters.

To listen to or download this episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you’ve missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

Bobby Short and Mabel Mercer perform on PBS in 1972:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“The most violent revolutions in an individual’s beliefs leave most of his old order standing.”

William James, “What Pragmatism Means”

From 2003:

I try not to fly at night, but this time I decided to give it a go, and at the end of 45 anxious minutes spent pushing through a cold front, our smaller-than-usual jet popped out of the clouds and started its descent into the New York area. Suddenly the once-invisible earth below me was lit by a million glittering pinpoints of copper, gold, and chilly blue-white. Not for the first time, I wondered why no painter has ever taken for his subject what one sees from the window of an airplane. Surely Whistler would have known what to do with the lights of a city, just as Constable might have reveled in the spectacle of clouds seen from above….

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Yes, I now know about Yvonne Jacquette, whose work Mrs. T and I long to add to the Teachout Museum when we find just the right piece.

“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”

William James, The Principles of Psychology

As those of you who follow me in the social media may already know, Mrs. T spent Saturday night in the emergency room of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, her transplant center. Our original plan had been to spend the evening at home, watching Gone With the Wind on TCM. Instead, Mrs. T unexpectedly developed acute respiratory difficulties related to pulmonary hypertension, the chronic illness for which she is awaiting a double lung transplant. We called 911, and an ambulance rushed her to the hospital minutes later. Twenty-four hours after that, she was finally transferred from the ER to the intensive-care unit, that being how long it took for an ICU bed to open up. Moral: try not to have a respiratory crisis in upper Manhattan on a Saturday night the week before Christmas!

Mrs. T is still in the ICU as I write these words. The doctors there are endeavoring to figure out exactly what went wrong with her, get it under control, and decide what relevance this current crisis has to her long-term problems. The good news is that her condition now appears to be fairly stable, at least for the present. Earlier this morning she was successfully connected to an ECMO machine, a newish device not unlike a heart-lung machine that oxygenates her blood directly. She is now resting more or less comfortably while we wait for the next step, whatever it may be—perhaps even the transplant that she so desperately needs.

I’ve spent most of the past two days at Mrs. T’s bedside, and can report that while the chairs in the New York-Presbyterian ER are comprehensively uncomfortable, the doctors and nurses there and in the ICU are as good as it gets. Likewise the EMT technicians who transported Mrs. T from our living-room couch to the ER in nothing flat. We are overflowing with gratitude in all possible directions.

Needless to say, things are still up in the air, and I will keep you posted. In the meantime, our thanks to all of you who have reached out on Facebook and Twitter to wish Mrs. T well. I’ve been passing on your messages of love and hope, and they have warmed both of our hearts.

Because of Mrs. T’s illness, I didn’t post quite as much in this space in 2019 as I have in previous years. Nevertheless, I’ve been a reasonably active blogger, and I thought you might be interested in revisiting ten of the postings I liked best from the year just past:

• In 1939, Edward G. Robinson commissioned and sat for a family portrait by Edouard Vuillard. Go here to find out how “La famille d’Edward G. Robinson” came to be—and what ultimately became of it.

• Don Shirley was the first black musician I ever saw perform in public, all the way back in 1969. As I recalled in February, “The ‘Don Shirley’ of Green Book is in many ways very much like the man I saw on the stage of the Smalltown Middle School gymnasium.”

• “It happens that I’d never been in an auto accident before. What surprised me most about the experience was how loud it was. The crunching sound that you hear when another car runs into you is really quite overwhelming ….”

• “It struck me a couple of months ago that Mrs. T’s recent travails had made her even more deserving than usual of a just-because-I-love-you present. Since she now spends most of her time at our farmhouse in Connecticut, I decided to give her a work of art that would not only be pleasing specifically to her (our tastes are not identical, though they overlap widely) but would also be suitable for hanging there….”

• “I was twenty-two when I met Harry Jenks, the first great jazz musician to enter my life. He taught me more than any of my teachers, and meant as much to me as a person as anyone outside my immediate family. Not a week has gone by since his death that I haven’t thought about him….”

• “Eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger now fills me with memories of one of the most joyful parts of a largely happy life….”

• “Ten years ago tonight, the Santa Fe Opera gave the premiere of The Letter, the first of my four collaborations—three operas and a cantata—with Paul Moravec, whose music I loved long before either of us thought of working together. Writing it changed my life utterly and profoundly….”

• “Two weeks ago, Mrs. T’s cellphone, which she keeps turned on around the clock, as I do mine, in the hope of learning that donor lungs have become available, rang at three a.m. The caller, a transplant coordinator from New York-Presbyterian Hospital, told her that the hospital had just received an ‘organ offer’ from UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing, for which she was the number-one match on the waiting list….”

• When a friend dies far too young, you’re likely to find yourself reflecting on your own latter end. That’s what happened to me in September.

• “In New York City, where I’ve lived since 1985, family traditions, like family ties, are what you make of them, and I know many people who are content, or at least willing, to make nothing of them at all. Not so, however, in Smalltown, where past and present are as close as the pages of a book….”

Julie Andrews sings “I Could Have Danced All Night,” from My Fair Lady, on an episode of The Dinah Shore Chevy Show originally telecast by NBC on January 12, 1958. Andrews was then appearing in the show on Broadway:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)