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StumbleUponThe Patient Meets the Artist
His was no mere bulge: Young had an eight-millimeter-long irregularly shaped bubble protruding from his carotid artery. From the images, Dr. Sun concluded the aneurysm had been there for some time, but it needed to be repaired -- soon. "I wasn't really thinking, Hey, I'm going to die," Young comments, "but eventually if that goes unchecked, it explodes and that's it. Curtains."It was at this point that Neil Young, the patient, ran headlong into Neil Young, the artist. For decades, Young has planned his songwriting and recording around the phases of the moon and, aneurysm or not, the time was perfect for creating a new album. He'd written one song, "The Painter," and had nine to go. In just days he planned to fly to Nashville to finish the project. Since surgery to repair the aneurysm wasn't scheduled for a couple of weeks, Dr. Sun approved the musician's trip, as long as he started taking blood pressure medication right away to prevent the bulge from rupturing.
In Nashville, Young worked like a man possessed. "I think of this album as his life flashing before his eyes," says Pegi, Young's wife and occasional backup singer. He began pouring out songs about the forces that shaped him -- family, friends, faith, and his upbringing in the small Canadian town of Omemee, north of Toronto. Sweet memories blow through the verses, but Young tempers them with the inevitability of death and dying. The title song, "Prairie Wind," with its lyrics -- "Tryin' to remember what my daddy said/Before too much time took away his head" -- is a reference to his father, Scott, who died last year. A sports journalist and author who suffered dementia for years, his father now visits him, Young says, in dreams.
With three songs recorded, Young returned to New York for an examination by his surgeon, Dr. Y. Pierre Gobin, who told him that he would repair Young's aneurysm by running a catheter through a femoral artery, located in the upper thigh, through his thorax and into his head. The bulge would be sealed with tiny coils.
With a week to go before the operation, Young returned to Nashville, where he wrote and recorded another five songs. But every day the surgery loomed larger -- and so did his fear. "I was terrified," Young says, "knowing I might not be the same, that they could screw up -- because Pegi and I have lived with people with brain injuries our whole lives."
And so he has. Zeke Young, now in his mid-30s, the singer's son with the late actress Carrie Snodgress, was born with cerebral palsy. Six years later, Ben, Young's son with Pegi, was also born with cerebral palsy, so acute that he was rendered mute and quadriplegic. CP isn't considered a genetic condition, and the Youngs regard themselves "chosen" by their sons.
Which means that for years they have thrown themselves into helping their boys. Pegi was one of the founders of The Bridge School in Hillsborough, California, near the couple's 900-acre ranch. The school's goal is to allow children with severe speech and physical challenges to interact and communicate, any way they can. High-tech, low-tech, whatever it takes, The Bridge helps its students break through. "I've had people tell me they didn't realize that they could communicate with somebody who maybe looks different, and feels unapproachable," says Pegi. "And so we get by that, and it's just so cool."
The night before his operation Neil and Pegi gathered Zeke, Ben and Amber, reassuring them that the surgery wasn't a big deal, that it would be a complete success. Then, privately, the couple went through intensely emotional decisions about what to do if everything didn't go as planned.
In the end, everything turned out just fine in the OR, and Young quickly returned to his New York hotel to recuperate. Two days later, headed for a local restaurant on his first trip out after the surgery, Young managed half a block before hearing his foot make a strange sucking sound with each step. He looked down to see his leg washed in blood. The point of entry for his aneurysm repair -- his femoral artery -- had suddenly reopened, a very rare condition that may not be preventable but is treatable.
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