"Five months later, the hour of decision approached. Neither Dr. Wilkinson nor I recommended a surgical approach because of the complex nature of the heart operation that would be needed and because of President Kimball's being in congestive heart failure at seventy-seven years of age. So President Kimball called a special meeting with the First Presidency. Invited to the meeting in addition to the First Presidency and Sister Kimball were Dr. Ernest L. Wilkinson and myself. President Kimball began the meeting by saying, 'I am a dying man. I can feel my life slipping. At the present rate of deterioration, it is my belief that I can live only about two more months. Now I'd like my medical cardiologist, Dr. Ernest L. Wilkinson, to present his views about my health.'"

"because of congestive failure, occasioned by the extra workload on the heart, strained with an incompetent aortic valve and a high- grade obstruction in the most important artery in the heart, spontaneous recovery would be unlikely and death would ensue in the not-too-distant future."

"What can cardiac surgery offer?"

"I indicated that the operation, if it were to be done, would be a compound surgical procedure consisting of two components. First, the defective aortic valve would require removal and replacement with a prosthetic aortic valve. Second, the left anterior descending coronary artery would have to be revascularized with a bypass graft."

"What would the risks be with such procedures?"

"We have no experience doing both operations on patients in this age group. Therefore, I cannot give you any risk data based on experience. All I can say is, it would entail extremely high risk."

"I'm an old man and ready to die. It is well for a younger man to come to the Quorum and do the work I can no longer do."

"At that point President Harold B. Lee, speaking for the First Presidency, rose to his feet, pounded his fist to the desk, and said, 'Spencer, you have been called! You are not to die! You are to do everything that you need to do in order to care for yourself and continue to live.'"

"Then I will have the operation performed."

"Sister Kimball wept. When he spoke those words, my heart sank, for the weight of this decision seemed suddenly to pass to me. But this was a remarkable event. This momentous decision, which shaped the history of the Church, was not based on medical recommendation. It was based strictly on the desire of President Kimball, as an Apostle of the Lord, to be obedient to the inspired direction of the First Presidency of the Church."

"President Kimball attended only one of the seven sessions of general conference in April 1972," Russell recalled. "His breathlessness and inability to exert himself because of his congestive heart failure forced him to listen to the other sessions from his bed."

"They blessed me that the operation would be performed without error, that all would go well, and that I need not fear for my own inadequacies, for I had been raised up by the Lord to perform this operation."

"He doesn't bleed!"

"From that very first maneuver until the last one, everything went as planned. There was not one broken stitch, not one instrument had fallen from the table, not one technical flaw had occurred in a series of thousands of intricate manipulations. I suppose my feelings at that time may have been like those of a concert pianist rendering a concerto without ever hitting a wrong note, or a baseball player who had pitched a perfect game - no hits, no runs, no errors, and no walks. For a long and difficult operation had been performed exactly in accordance with the blessing invoked by the power of the priesthood."

"President Lee was a master at masking his feelings, and he walked back into the room as somber as he could be. He said, 'That was Brother Nelson. Spencer is off the pump!' We all smiled and said a prayer of thanksgiving."

"Even more overpowering than the feeling that came as we shocked President Kimball's heart and it resumed its beating immediately with vigor, was the manifestation of the Spirit which told me that I had just operated upon the man who would become president of the Church! "I knew that President Kimball was a prophet. I knew that he was an Apostle, but now it was revealed to me that he would preside over the Church! This feeling was so strong that I could hardly contain myself as we performed the routine maneuvers to conclude the operation. Later on in the week as he convalesced, I shared these impressions with him and he and I wept. I know that he did not take this feeling as seriously as I did because he knew that President Harold B. Lee, who stood before him in the Quorum, was younger and more healthy than he."

"The thing that President Kimball feared most was disability," Russell said. "He did not fear death, but he did not want to be a drain on the Brethren, the Church, or his beloved Camilla. He was concerned that although his life might have been prolonged, he might not be able to return to full service in the Church."

"I even sat down at President Kimball's typewriter and wrote a medical report on President Kimball that I hoped would be of some value to President Harold B. Lee as he, the new president of the Church, considered the reorganization."

"Over the next day or two I began to sense a mood of anxiety, not only among President Kimball and the other Brethren, but in the whole community, for three presidents of the Church had been buried in the three- year period from 1970 to 1973. Now the mantle was to fall upon President Spencer W. Kimball, a man known to have cancer controlled with surgery and radiation, heart disease mended with open-heart surgery, and another illness for which he had just been hospitalized in the preceding month."

"As I sensed these anxieties, I was impressed to write a letter to President Kimball on the Sunday he was ordained president of the Church. President Kimball read excerpts from my letter to the Brethren in the temple and again at his first press conference. It gave him a great deal of fortification, particularly with the press as they questioned him pointedly, for he was then able to refer to the letter."

"Your surgeon wants you to know that your body is strong, your heart is better than it has been for years, and that by all of our finite ability to predict, you may consider this new assignment without undue anxiety about your health."