The Ultimate Climb - Mitral Valve Repair

John Greenberg

“A little more that a year ago, I could barely climb a set of stairs in Grand Central. I just returned from Tanzania where I summitted Kilimanjaro in six days. I am forever indebted to Dr. Galloway and the entire NYU staff."

In July 2006, on a sunny Friday morning we spent several hours together. Although not a word was exchanged between us, that meeting forever changed my life. On that day, I was your patient and you were my surgeon.

By the spring of that year I could not climb even one flight of stairs in the main corridor of Grand Central Station without falling short of breath. I was 38 years old and had been suffering degenerative mitral valve function since the age of 17.

That is why it is such a distinct pleasure to enclose a photograph of myself, scarcely twelve months later, on the roof of Africa – the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro -- at 19,341 feet. I climbed it, step by step, over 45 miles and 6 days.

Dr. Galloway, it is both in cheerful commemoration and solemn acknowledgment of your crucial role in this endeavor that I write. It is the hands of the surgeon, like the hands of the artist, that ultimately set a course. You not only saved my life, but have given me a new one.

It is nearly impossible for me to fathom the years of study and scientific ingenuity among both you and your colleagues that went into making my surgery a success. The care I received before and after the procedure was a symphony -- so varied, vast and complex, yet so intricately timed and perfectly synchronized that it leaves me astonished just to recall it.

I know you pioneered the procedure that enabled me to obtain a valve repair instead of a replacement. This is not debt I can readily repay. What, after all, is the price to be new man? Nonetheless, I ask you to accept this photograph of your one-time patient high atop the largest free standing mountain in the world as modest remuneration. Like the scar between my ribs, it serves as a daily reminder of what I had lost and what I now have again.

As a physician and a scientist, you likely see the heart as a complex, yet ultimately understandable biological machine. I want to assure you that I speak from the bottom of the poet's heart -- my metaphorical heart -- endowed with hope and affection and song -- when I thank you for what you have given back to me.

Yours truly,
John Greenberg