Time for a Heart-to-Heart: Reflections on Life in the Face of Death

Time for a Heart-to-Heart is not your typical memoir, but is rather eclectic in tone — at times philosophical, poetic, poignant, uplifting, confessional, hysterically funny, and nostalgic. But most of all, it is an inspiring story of the triumph of hope and the human spirit in the face of the direst of circumstances and the ultimate challenge of survival. People who have gone through significant heart disease or have undergone organ transplants – as well as their families and friends – will appreciate this book.

About a year ago, Bob Mitchell became very sick. He would endure three near-fatal episodes of ventricular tachycardia due to a heart muscle comprised of 54% scar tissue, as well as heart surgeries, two harrowing months of waiting on the transplant list for a new heart on life supporting IV drips (during which time a malignant tumor was detected in his kidney), partial nephrectomy surgery to remove the cancer, another month of waiting, 12-hour heart and kidney transplant surgery, and 100 days on life support in four different hospitals. A novelist at heart, Bob’s ordeal seemed like a memoir screaming to be written.

Not simply a narrative of the physical and emotional experience of what it’s like to go through and recover from a transplant, it is at its core both a thought-provoking, introspective monologue, and an intimate dialogue with the reader, concerning life’s fundamental conflicts that the author pondered during his ordeal. These experiences and tribulations gave clarity and perspective to the things Bob had been thinking, teaching, and writing for over five decades: fear and hope, despair and joy, failure and success, pride and humility, thought and feeling, control and surrender, arbitrariness and justice, constriction and freedom, youth and age, life and death.