Thursday, December 29, 2022

Spencer W. Kimball Changing his Mind About Having a High-Risk Surgery (October 9, 1971)

  

On October 9, 1971, Dr. Nelson performed a selective coronary arteriogram and found that President Kimball’s heart was being overworked because of severe aortic valve disease. The overworked heart was being undersupplied with blood because of an obstruction in the main arterial supply line to the cardiac muscle.

 

“Five months later, the hour of decision approached,” Russell solemnly recalled. “Neither Dr. Wilkinson nor I recommended a surgical approach because of the complex nature of the heart operation that would be needed and because of President Kimball’s being congestive heart failure at seventy-seven years of age. So President Kimball called a special meeting with the First Presidency. Invited to the meeting in addition to the First Presidency and Sister Kimball were Dr. Ernest L. Wilkinson and myself. President Kimball began the meeting by saying, ‘I am a dying man. I can feel my life slipping. At the present rate of deterioration, it is my belief that I can live only about two more months. Now I’d like my medical cardiologist, Dr. Ernest L. Wilkinson, to present his views about my health.’”

 

Dr. Wilkinson reaffirmed President Kimball’s statement, explaining that “because of congestive failure, occasioned by the extra workload on the heart, strained with an incompetent aortic valve and a high-grade obstruction in the most important artery in the heart, spontaneous recovery would be unlikely and death would ensue in the not-too-distant future.”

 

Then President Kimball called on Dr. Nelson to speak, asking, “What can cardiac surgery offer?”

 

Dr. Nelson said, “I indicated that the operation, if it were to be done, would be a compound surgical procedure consisting of two components. First, the defective aorist valve would require removal and replacement with a prosthetic aortic valve. Second, the left anterior descending coronary artery would have to be revascularized with a bypass graft.”

 

President Lee asked, “What would the risks be with such procedures?”

 

Dr. Nelson replied, “We have no experience doing both operations on patients in this age group. Therefore, I cannot give you any risk data based on experience. All I can say is, it would entail extremely high risk.”

 

Then a weary President Kimball said, “I’m an old man and ready to die. It is well for a younger man to come to the Quorum and do the work I can no longer do.”

 

Elder Nelson described the dramatic reaction of President Lee: “At that point President Harold B. Lee, speaking for the First Presidency, rose to his feet, pounded his fist to the desk, and said, ‘Spencer, you have been called! You are not to die! You are to do everything that you need to do in order to care for yourself and continue to live.’”

 

President Kimball responded, “Then I will have the operation performed.” (Spencer Condie, Russell M. Nelson: Father, Surgeon, Apostle [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003], 153-55)