Of Mice and Men frontman Austin Carlile suffers from a genetic disorder called Marfan Syndrome, which affects connective tissues in the body. For Carlile, this required open heart surgery, and while I'm sure you've heard of just how dangerous and generally terrifying a procedure like that can be for a person, Carlile's description in an interview with Metal Hammer is just downright scary.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. It’s hard to go through something like that that’s dangerous in general, and just to not know if you’re gonna be there, four, five or six hours later. When I had my heart surgery, my heart was stopped. They put my head in a whole thing of ice, to stop your brain activity, you’re dead. I was clinically dead for three hours while they did the procedure.
There’s so much stuff going through my head. Like, ‘Am I going to see my mom? What’s going to happen?’ Like, who knows, I was kind of excited. But the one thing I remember right before I went under, and before they put in the relax sedative into you, I was just sitting there and my sister and my dad were there and they said goodbye and started wheeling me back. I just remember being so at peace, and I remember saying, ‘Look God, this is in your hands.’ It was out of my hands completely at that point.
I said, ‘I have to have faith that you have a plan for me and you want me to do something with my life. And if you don’t, then it’s just going to end right here. And if it doesn’t, then I need to wake up and do that.’ Ever since that heart surgery, for one, when I woke up that day, I’ve never been in worse pain in my life. When you have your chest broken open, it’s just breathing, and moving your arms, and everything, it’s insane.”
“I spent two weeks in the hospital recovering, and then I ended up getting pneumonia in my lungs, so I had to stay another week and a half, and Alan came and saw me in the hospital, and just that whole experience alone really taught me a lot about myself and it taught me a lot of where I wanted to go next.”
For the sake of Carlile's friends and family, we really hope he doesn't have to go through anything like that ever again. On a personal note, I've had family go through surgeries very similar, and it's fucking chilling for everyone involved. Will you see that person again? Will everything go alright? Will they wake up, or will they be in a coma? I don't think "clinically dead" is the right term to use, seeing as you can't die for three hours and then just be revived like that, but your body does undergo a fairly serious amount of stress during the surgery.
