Eric De La Cruz Goes Into Surgery; Twitter Crashes

UPDATE: Twitter is back and I have copied and will re-post Veronica De La Cruz's messages, which pour out the story of the family's ordeal tonight in an L.A. hospital. They are in their original Tweet form, i.e., constrained to 140 characters each, and deserve to be read as a contemporaneous narrative:

We just finished going over some paperwork with the doctors for Eric. They are going to take him in for an emergency VAD surgery. They are

Prepping him now. I will let you know when he goes in. Please keep praying for #ERIC.

They just took Eric in for surgery

Twitters been overcapacity so haven't been able to update. Am going to try to get to my laptop soon. I need a distraction. We r a mess #ERIC

Finally made it to my laptop. Tried to update earlier but Twitterberry would not work because it said Twitter was overcapacity. Right now I

think both me and Mom feel pretty numb. We've kind of been going through the motions since they took Eric in for surgery. He is surrounded

by a pretty good team of doctors and knew exactly what was going on when they took him. We all had to sign a bunch of consent forms together

so we are all aware of the risks involved. Basically -- Eric got really sick overnight. He wasnt doing very well when we came in this AM

and was saying he wasnt going to make it. The head of the transplant center had put a phone call in to me and suddenly Eric was being

paid visits from every doctor there -- pulmonary, kidney, all the CT surgeons etc...etc....they decided that putting in a VAD would be the

wisest decision to help his failing organs and to get him to transplant. It was becoming clear that Eric could not wait any longer even tho

it is harder to go from an implant device to transplant and there are more risks involved. They have to give Eric a Bi-Vad because of the

condition his heart is in. Normally they do an LVAD -- which they would attach only to the left ventricle, but in Eric's case they have to

do both left and right ventricles. Mom and I are really nervous because any way you look at it, it's open heart surgery and there are many

risks involved so I think we are both scared. Eric was being a trooper before he went in. He was scared too so I put on a relaxation cd. He

wasn't having any of it. Especially the part where it said to relax and pretend you are on a beach. He gave me a dirty look so I took it

off (just trying to help). I asked him if I should play some music and he said yes, so I opened up my iTunes and looked for stuff that might

be calming....something he would like. I ended up playing Thievery Corporation and that seemed to do the trick. He was starting to relax.

When I played Lebanese Blonde he even bobbed his head a little so we were all relieved. Eventually he fell asleep, which was the best

possible thing that could happen. The doctors were happy because he hadn't eaten for 3 days - so there was nothing in his stomach. They felt

it was a good time to do this surgery. They told us the first incision would take place around 6 local time. They also told us to go home

because they felt like it would be a pretty long process. We are going to head back to the hospital around midnight.We've been lucky because

Michele, who works with Trent, has been with us to make sure that we are eating etc...Mom and I have been like zombies. Noelle, Eric's ex is

still here too. Before Eric went in he gave us a thumbs up and mouthed "I LOVE YOU" to all three of us. We promised him we would see him

as soon as he was finished. They told us when he comes out he will be on a ventilator and unable to speak to us. We are just praying now

that everything goes well. I have utter confidence in all the doctors and the team that he is with. Eric has quite a fan base around the

hospital. They all really like him, so I am sure they will take good care of him. Now it's just a waiting game.....Pls keep praying. XO#ERIC

Thank u for all ur prayers. @Ronsayro, thx 4 going 2 church. I am praying with you too. Love 2 all of u 4 ur support xo #ERICS TWITTER ARMY

@trent_reznor TY. We appreciate all the love, strength, prayers & support u've been sending our way. I know #ERIC has. Will keep u updated xo


This could be a mere coincidence. As a journalist, I'm trained to caution you, dear reader, that this may be the case. But a strange convergence of events involving the De La Cruz case and Twitter occurred earlier tonight.

I left my connectivity behind for a few hours to watch my son's soccer team play in their championship game (which ended in a 2-2 tie, followed by shootouts to decide the outcome), and when I got back home, and tried to reload my link to Veronica De La Cruz's Twitter page, I momentarily saw the Tweet flash that "Eric is in surgery."

Then came the whale, the symbol that appears when Twitter is over-capacity. For over an hour I tried dozens of times to get through, but Twitter was only serving error pages. Meanwhile, as those who have made comments on my previous blog posts on Eric's case have noted, his is by far the biggest "heart-based" campaign ever to sweep through Twitter.

Could it be that the size and intensity of "Eric's Army" tonight overwhelmed Twitter's capacity to respond? Perhaps. Or maybe it was merely a coincidence.

Then, I was again offline for several hours to attend the final performance of my son's 8th grade play The Bourgeois Gentleman. (See yesterday's post.)

When I got back, after 11 p.m., I was able to access the material now appearing at the top of this post. I hope Twitter can clarify whether the De la Cruz case was a factor in tonight's shutdown, or whether it was just a case of a spike in traffic caused by other, more routine factors.

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The Art of Empathy We Call Acting

Tonight I am going to write a bit about my own family, focusing on my 14-year-old son, who is about to graduate from Middle School and therefore is enroute to a big change in life, i.e., High School, several months hence.

As the oldest in a cluster of three, whose parents painfully separated (and later divorced) six years ago, he's spent almost half of his young life looking out for others -- each of his parents, individually, and both of his younger siblings.

He is one of the most sensitive kids I've known, and that's saying something, because not only would I describe all six of my children as sensitive, but because I'm drawn to sensitivity in others, and many, many children exude sensitivity of all kinds.

In his case, to be more specific, I've always felt the heaviest weight he carries is a deep sense of empathy for others. It was clear from a frighteningly young age that here was a fellow who identifies easily with others, understands their main vulnerabilities, and all too often takes on their battles as if they were his responsibility to fix.

Once, during a dispute with his little brother, he said, "Don't you know the worst, the most painful insult you could ever hand me would be to call me a bully!" (He'd just acted very much like a bully, BTW, toward said little brother, but that's another matter.)

That same little, adoring brother was there with him tonight, which was opening night at Fort Mason for The Bourgeois Gentleman by Moliere. Before hand, filled with nervous energy, the boys ran out the piers and gazed at Alcatraz.

Once inside the theater, when the lights were off, my sweet, empathic child played the manipulative, deliciously unctuous character of Dorante, a count whose intelligent use of language is deployed to get all he wants while ripping off the bourgeois Monsieur Jourdain, a pompous fool played tonight by one of his classmates so brilliantly as to bring tears - mostly of laughter -- to all of our eyes.

My own tears were watching my son fake being evil, because to be truthful, this rakishly handsome young man, tall, with a deep voice and the physical grace only athletes and dancers possess, is one of the least evil persons I have yet encountered in my real life.

It was quite a performance, and only the first of two. Every parent, or adult friend, of a youngster easily knows how I feel tonight. There is a certain swelling pride as we watch this next generation assume its place in the natural order of things. To be clear, every single one of those eighth-graders performed beautifully tonight, in my eyes, and I would be very proud to be the father of any of them.

So, yes, I am proud of my own, but I am in awe of what we all, collectively, can produce with years of the absolute hardest of all work -- parenting. The planet will be in good hands, I sense, once these guys are in charge.

As always, it is through the gift of art (and art teachers) that we get to see them most clearly, for only in art can they all assume different roles, thereby experiencing the ultimate gift of empathy -- living in the shoes of another.

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Eric De La Cruz: A Family Prays

Twenty-seven-year-old Eric De La Cruz continues to lie in a hospital bed, somewhere in Los Angeles, hoping and praying for the new heart that will save his life. His sister, CNN Internet correspondent Veronica De la Cruz, continues to communicate with her many followers in "Eric's Army," who have donated money, time, and energy to bring his case to the attention of political and health establishment figures who had been unresponsive until she turned to Twitter to plead her younger brother's case.

Trent Reznor of the touring Nine Inch Nails, spontaneously started a fund-raising effort on behalf of Eric less than a week ago, and as of yesterday morning, it had raised an estimated $850,000. Reznor devised an ingenious VIP package of backstage access at NIN's concerts for donors to Eric's cause, and the response has been overwhelming.

So overwhelming, in fact, that Reznor announced today that all VIP capacity for the band's remaining U.S. concerts is now sold out. Given Reznor's commitment to this cause, I would not be surprised if he comes up with alternative opportunities for people to gain access to the band in order to continue to support Eric, and others in his situation.

(Many fans would love to be present at a practice session, I bet, or a post-concert party off-venue. Just hints, Trent.)

Veronica tonight is addressing legitimate concerns some have raised over Twitter about what will happen to the surplus money, should there be any, after Eric's medical costs are paid off. She is assuring followers that she will make Eric's costs transparent and that leftover money, if any, will go into a non-profit 501-(c)-3 organization dedicated to helping people in similar straits to those Eric found himself.



Meanwhile, somebody (Jesse Luna (@jesseluna -- see comment below) on the Twitter network designed a little banner consisting of a red heart/hashmark/ERIC, which has now become ubiquitous among a broad swath of Twitter activists. This entire campaign has to warm the hearts of Twitter's founders, especially Biz Stone, who has been described as a "humanist" who wants his company to help make the world a better place.

As I have speculated in my previous coverage of this dramatic case, we also may be witnessing the birth of a new kind of social movement in the De la Cruz case, something akin to move.on.org's impact on political campaigns. But this one will not benefit politicians so much as common people, with few tools to combat a vicious, cruel health care system controlled by entrenched interests utterly unconcerned with how hard it has become to find and afford decent health care in America, the richest land on earth.



I'll continue to publicize this case for as long as possible, in the hope of drawing attention to what strikes me as a remarkable new use of social media. Those who dismiss Twitter as just a lot of noise need to consider the De la Cruz case.

Rising above the noise is a signal, and I am hearing it loud and clear. It is the voice of every day Americans screaming, "We are fed up with this rotten deal you offer us in health care. It's too expensive, it's much too complicated, it's utterly unfair, and in the end it only benefits the so-called "insurers" and large institutional "providers." It screws not only us, but individual doctors, nurses, small companies, and everything that is truly American about America."

President Obama, you need to be paying attention. This is the wake-up call you need to stir a fire under the slack asses in Congress and the fat-cat lobbyists who control them, in order to reform the health care system from the ground up.

It is never wise to ignore a firestorm, however distant it may presently appear. Firestorms have a tendency to sneak up on you, destroying all that lies in their paths. So, be forewarned.

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Eric De La Cruz Makes the "List" for a New Heart

This was posted by Veronica De La Cruz on Twitter today:

Eric has not been doing well. He has a tube in his chest and cannot speak. I have been a total mess. He has been undergoing some pretty rigorous testing; on a lot of meds and not completely coherent. He notices when we are in the room and he looks a little startled. My mom says its hard for her to be in the room because she doesn’t like to see her son like that. I keep telling her to be stronger so he knows we are behind him 100%...

I’m trying really hard to keep it together but its been increasingly difficult. On a good note, they finally listed Eric today. He is status "1a," so he is now on the list for a heart. When (they) told me I started crying hysterically, I’ve been such an emotional mess. Waterworks…waterworks. I finally just went to the bathroom to wash my face because my mom was tired of looking At my mascara stained eyes and cheeks. So there you have it. He is on the list.

We made it to another milestone.

I only wish Eric was better so he could celebrate with us. All I ask now is that you please help us pray/hope — for Eric to get better and for a new heart to arrive.

These are the words of a loving sister at the point of emotional exhaustion. She has been campaigning tirelessly, trying to beat the odds and help her younger brother survive.

"He has not been doing well."

All of us who have sat in an I.C.U. with a family member on the narrow fence between life and death know how this feels. You keep hoping they will make it, but you fear the worst, even as you hope for the best.

I remember my frantic flight to Michigan 33 years ago after my mother suffered a brain aneurysm. With me was my wife and my infant daughter, and all I could think was, "would my child ever get to know her grandmother?"

Mom was in a coma when I arrived and I freaked out. I screamed at her to wake up, for what seemed like hours. Somehow, she did. It had been an unconsciousness not caused by the blood clot on her brain but by an adverse reaction to a drug they had given her.

Ten years ago, I again raced to a hospital, this time in Florida, in the middle of the night before my father was to have first met my youngest daughter, then barely two months old.

He'd suffered a massive stroke. He did not survive the night and he never met his granddaughter.

My sympathy and empathy is with Veronica and her family tonight. It can go either way, but her brother is still so young (27) that if he gets a heart, he should survive. Of course, it will be a bittersweet situation because someone's healthy heart has to stop beating soon for Eric to survive.

Life is full of such tragedies and ironies. Congratulations to the Twitter community, "Eric's Army," which at least has given this young man a chance to continue his life.

May the energy they've generated carry over to press for reform the U.S. health care system. Because it never should be this hard to save a life.

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The Fence vs. The Bamboo

Who do you think wins this battle? Over time, there's no doubt. The bamboo was planted by the Chinese family across that fence; my landlady recently said she's like the fence replaced.

As a fence it isn't much. It slants into the bamboo forest; some of the boards at ground level have rotted away. Truth to tell, the bamboo has already won this confrontation.



But why build a new fence? At this meeting place between the two yards, the bamboo is so strong and thick that it forms every bit as effective a barrier as a new fence would.



Furthermore, the bamboo is expanding. It wants more space, and it's determined to claim it.



The fence is just an old rotting fence. Myabe it used to make sense, but no more.



As long as there have been fences, they have served as useful metaphors, raising all sorts of questions about how we choose to live our lives.



Robert Frost aside, are we certain that in today's urban environment, fences make good neighbors?



In the age of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr -- the age not of excluding but of sharing?

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A Dove for Peace

This has been a holiday weekend in San Francisco, of course, like all over America, but besides being Memorial Day Weekend, this was also Carnival, which turns my neighborhood into a giant echo chamber with Salsa and dozens of other types of Central and Southern American dance music blasting from the many parade floats moving through this end of town.



So many diverse cultures were on display yesterday that it was again a striking reminder how useless a term like "Latino" or "Hispanic" is when describing immigrants from beneath our Southern border.



Even the languages vary, in some case considerably. Various dialects of Spanish, Portugese, and a number of native tongues were dominant -- English, broken or fluent, was only spoken by a minority of the participants.



Some performances were truly inspired.



Just a reminder that our country is fast becoming the most diverse on earth, and that's a good thing.



For those willing to pay attention, our cities are becoming street colleges that teach culture, language, history and the beauty of difference in a way that anyone who can appreciate music cannot fail to grasp.



There also was the token nod to old America in the form of the classic car club.



Nice, though in this case, not made in America!

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The Eric De La Cruz Case and Why Old Media is Dying

UPDATE: Veronica De La Cruz reported via Twitter that Eric was finally been admitted Sunday night to a hospital and is now being tested to see whether he can be listed as a candidate for a heart transplant.


Why is it that Facebook and Twitter are increasingly emerging as dominant forces in the media industry, while traditional institutions like The New York Times and the McClatchy Company are sputtering ever closer to a halt? There are many reasons, actually, but one key has long been visible right on the nytimes.com home page -- in the form of the link to its "most emailed" articles.

For anybody willing to adopt a data-driven approach to analyzing how to improve their media company's performance, the runaway popularity of that "most emailed" link provides a powerful bit of evidence.

What is a reader's first impulse when (s)he finds an article just too amazing and/or useful to keep to herself? She wants to share it. Friends share articles, colleagues do, too. Sharing information online is one of the ways we maintain connections with one another, though we may be separated by time, distance, and circumstance.

Sharing usually is an act of intimacy, of caring, although we've all had the experience of receiving material we'd prefer not seeing, as well. (In that case, it is more like the sender imposing his views on you -- this is particularly true in matters of religion and politics.)

Nevertheless, from the perspective of a media executive, this massive yearning to share content, sending it "viral," is one of the key elements of understanding the new media landscape.

So, let's consider Twitter. What's attractive about millions of people sharing trivialities about their daily lives in 140 characters or less? The answer is nothing. But that is the wrong question to ask about Twitter. What the micro-blogging platform actually presents is an elegant way for people to share news and information, and increasingly, to organize and wage campaigns to right wrongs.

In other words, Twitter (and in a similar vein, Facebook) are emerging as town squares for the global village. This is where people are opting to go to get the news out when something big happens in their lives or within their view.

The earthquakes in China. News broke over Twitter. That plane landing in the Hudson. News broke over Twitter. Those devastating wildfires in Australia -- Twitter again, and in this case, the service is credited with saving lives.

As we live and share our lives over an increasingly networked, geo-coded, mobile platform, many of our old assumptions have to die. Like any early media form, there is plenty of trash, let's politely call it noise, on Twitter. But, signal tends to rise out of that noise, sometimes with impressive speed and clarity of purpose.

A little over a week ago, a relatively unknown Internet correspondent for CNN in New York City named Veronica De La Cruz turned to Twitter in desperation.

Her 27-year-old brother, Eric, was nearing death from a rare heart condition in Nevada. The family couldn't break through all of the red tape that characterizes the U.S. health care system to get him evaluated for what could be a life-saving heart transplant.

Veronica connected with various people using Twitter who have tens of thousands of "followers." One was a guy who goes by the name "The Expert." Normally, this guy does 30 second stand-up comedy videos, and over the course of a few weeks, he's built up a following from nothing to over 20,000 people as of a few moments ago.

Turns out, like many comedians, this guy has a huge heart, so when he learned of the De La Cruz family's ordeal, he went to work alerting his network, which contains some of the true Twitter giants, people with many hundreds of thousands of followers.

The initial appeal from Veronica De La Cruz was to ask people to write members of Congress to pressure for help with her brother's case, and over the course of the past week, this may have worked, because some of the red tape preventing Eric from being evaluated for a heart transplant has been snipped away.

But, among those who found out about the case from Twitter was Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. The rock group, on a long national tour with Jane's Addiction, has started raising money for the De La Cruz family, and at latest count, has brought in over $650,000.

Sadly, although he has gotten several steps closer to being admitted to UCLA hospital for evaluation, as of a few hours ago, Eric still was being refused entrance. The details are hard to sort out, as are facts about his current medical condition.

The effort over Twitter to save Eric De La Cruz continues to expand while we collectively wait to see whether it will succeed. But I can't help but think that whatever the outcome, his plight has ignited a firestorm among millions around this country who feel so poorly served by our present health care system. If so, it will be the actions of this past week at Twitter that historians will cite as the moment Americans started to organize a serious movement for reform.

Meanwhile, where is traditional media? So far, hardly showing up. The top link on Google if you search for "Eric De La Cruz" is not a major media company but yours truly, just one obscure blogger.

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