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Patrick Harrington (far left) and the swimmers he coaches as a Level 3 Certified-USMS Masters Coach. Patrick calls his crew "my motivation" as he rallies from quadruple heart bypass surgery.
By Ray Glier
The mythmaking we do in front of the mirror can kill us, like it almost killed Patrick Harrington, 73. A skilled swimmer since his youth, Patrick was a fabulist about his health. He did not hustle others. He hustled himself.
When he had “some sort of bug” in April, Harrington said he made up “respiratory illness” to explain it and deny.
When the cardiologist said “heart” and described the damage and recommended surgery, Patrick’s denial was bearish.
“Do I have to decide today?” he asked.
“Yes, right now,” the doc said.
Harrington’s arteries were filled with sludge. It would require a quadruple bypass. Stents, the doc said, were not an option.
Patrick kept thinking, “Me, a lifelong swimmer. No way.”
The truth was inaccessible to Harrington because he considered himself impervious to something like a heart attack. He was, By God, a Masters swimmer.
“I had a whole mind shift when I was in the hospital and laying there recovering,” Patrick said. “It just struck me there's much more to be aware of than just ‘Hey, I'm going to get to work out today’ and that workout will take care of my health.
“This heart thing, really, it just snuck up on me.”
**
Nothing I write in Geezer Jock is more important than Harrington’s story. Another athlete’s field guide of self-diagnosis was thrown on the rubbish heap with a six-hour surgery August 10.
“Even a person who does listen to their body carefully can get totally sidetracked and pull the wool over their eyes,” Patrick said.
“The point I want to make is people need to be proactive and not find yourself on the floor with a heart attack and go, ‘Oh yeah, something's happening.’ Get ahead of it.”
Harrington was a high school superstar in swimming in Houston in the late 1960s. Patrick was being groomed by legendary coach Richard Quick to pair with Mark Spitz and haul in Olympic gold medals for the U.S.
Spitz won four individual gold medals in the pool in the 1972 Games in Munich, each in a world record time.
Harrington was invited to the Olympic Trials as a 15-year old in 1968. He was 9th in the world in the 200 backstroke at 16 and then…he fell off the radar. He burned out at 18.
“I missed doing things with friends and being a teenager,” Patrick said.
He was out of competitive swimming for about four years. Harrington entered the University of Texas and swam for three seasons earning collegiate honors, but his comeback to Olympic-level swimming fizzled.
For the sake of his health and still with some competitive fire, Harrington started swimming in Masters meets. Patrick won medals at The National Senior Games and US Masters Swimming meets. He coached at Memorial Athletic Club & Aquatics Center in Houston, Texas, where he lives.
All good, right?
No, not all good.
For one thing, his personal culture got in the way. Even though he was a pre-med major in college (he eventually entered the family construction business), Patrick was a “denier” of medical institutions and the medical community.
Harrington had a lively “distrust” of medicine, particularly around the time of Covid. He would challenge his swimmers on the wisdom of getting the vaccine.
“I was totally fed up with the medical community,” Patrick said. “I said, ‘You know they're lying to us every time they come on the TV’. I would actually even debate with my swimmers who were getting the shots, and saying to them, ‘I'd be real careful, if I was you’.
“And I didn't I didn't take any of that (vaccine).”
Last April, Harrington went to a National Senior Games qualifying meet. He swam four events.
Five days later, he felt odd. Patrick told himself he had picked up a bug at the swim meet.
“I made up something like respiratory virus,” he said.
Finally, Patrick The Denier, had a nuclear stress test. The so-called “widow-maker”, the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery, which supplies blood to a major portion of the heart muscle, was 95% blocked. There was plenty of other damage, too. He got on a heart surgeon’s schedule.
“Once I was getting close to surgery, I could really feel my body ratcheting down and slowing down and walking from the kitchen to the living room was a chore,” Harrington said. “I kept having to take those little nitroglycerin pills.”
There were three revelations post-surgery.
*The night he got home from his six-day stay in the hospital, Harrington heard a rhythmic dum-dum-dum as he lay in bed. He thought his wife might have left the dryer on.
Then he checked his pulse. It was synced up to the dum-dum-dum in his head. It was his functioning heart talking to him.
That he couldn’t identify it meant Harrington really wasn’t listening to his body as his heart approached failure. Now, he listens. Stress tests, he said, will be routine.
*Patrick has lost 20 pounds. His mindset around eating has turned upside down. He eats very little at a sit-down meal. When he goes out to eat, he brings home half of the meal.
“This whole thing has just shifted how I'm treating my body now,” Harrington said. “I'm not willing to fill it full of crap.”
*And there is this adjustment to the central part of mythmaking about our health:
“Whatever you do that's a little outside your comfort zone is going to bring you some resiliency and some growth,” he said. “I have always been very attached to mental resiliency.”
Patrick was making the point that it is ok to go for it and stretch yourself. But there are limits on stretching yourself, he now says. Be wise. Seven weeks after the surgery, he is not back in the water yet, per the orders of a doctor who, once upon a time, he wouldn’t have trusted. Harrington gives lessons, for now, from a chair on the pool deck.
“One, I still do believe in a resiliency mindset, and number two, I actually feel I'm going to be much better in the water,” Patrick said. “My blood flow is definitely enhanced.
“I've got to look at this thing called recovery, and I shouldn't really push the thing, so I'll just be in close communication with my surgeon.”
Imagine that, the mental warrior, Patrick Harrington, came home from the hospital with guardrails.
He almost waited until it was too late.
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