The story of my heart
This is the first entry in the Blog I set up for my heart and my heart surgery. That's an odd thing to blog about, but I have my reasons. I've had an almost overwhelming outpouring of good thoughts and well wishes as I prepare for my surgery. So much so, that I worry that when the surgery happens and during my recovery it will be almost impossible to keep everyone up to date with traditional means, the telephone. As a result, I've decided to create this blog, which I will update until my surgery, turning the reigns over to my daughters while I am on 'the dark side of the moon' and incapacitated. This will be the definitive source for information on my heart surgury, so please make a habit of coming here rather than using the telephone. You can leave notes and questions which we will endeavor to respond to in a timely manner. And once I'm feeling better I will make a point of contacting everyone to chat.
So with that out of the way, I'll fill in a bit of history for anyone who is interested. I'll skip the first 31 years of my life and cut to the chase.
For a while I worked at a large international company which I just refer to as the empire. I was a supervisor of about 20 people and lead a team or closer to 40. Our mission was to create and install a software package in the 40 international affiliates of the empire. Our first stop was Mexico where I spent close to three months solid working. As often as not this meant 20 hour days, seven days a week. In one particular two week period I put in more than 250 hours of work, averaging less than five hours of sleep a night. Needless to say this was a very high stress part of my life and the fact that I also chose to stop eating for the most part during this time probably didn't do my heart or body any favors. I dropped weight at an almost unimaginable rate. Anyway, after three months of this, I caught a plane at 5am followed by three more planes to make it home in time for Halloween, arriving at 6:30pm. Exactly a week later, I awoke to crushing chest pains and within days was recovering from my first heart surgery. That was an angioplasty.
Fast forward ten more years and I'm starting to have some symptoms again. This was last year, April I think. I was on this fitness kick which went well for a while until I realized that I could no longer make it more than a half mile on foot without feeling an odd pain in my shoulder. An odd pain that stopped once I stopped exercising. A few tests and a week later found me in the hospital. Another angioplasty, this time with a stint (a little wire cage to keep the artery open). During this operation they found that I had an artery in the lower region of the heart that was 100% closed. At the time, we didn't think it was a problem, and it probably isn't. That summer my daughters and I spent two weeks in Peru, including two awesome days climbing all over Machu Picchu. Magical, and totally impossible had my heart been giving me any problems.
Which brings us close to the present. About a month ago I realized that those odd shoulder pains had returned. After a few tests my cardiologist didn't think it was anything to worry about. However, at the insistence of both my general practioner and myself my cartiologist agreed that a catherization was in order. A catherization involves running a tube from the femoral artery into the heart, injecting die and taking a picture. The pictures were not so good, with a pretty ugly blockage very near to my aorta. To cut to the end of the story, the only option is bypass surgery which will fix this new blockage and that 100%-er from last year. I'm not going to go into any gory details, I'll leave that to the imagination or Google.
So here's the plan: I'm in the hospital at 6am on July 19th, surgery begins at 8am and is expected to be over by noon. Then there is a week in the hospital and a fairly long recovery at home (probably another four weeks at least). Am I a little bit scared, well that reminds me of what my instructor said just before my first (and last) skydive. There's only two types of people at this moment; those that are scared, and those that are liars. So yeah, I'm a bit scared, but not scared that something bad is going to happen, just scared of the unknown. Once, I get to the other side of the surgery, know the outcome and where I have to recover from, the fear will be gone.
And that's all I have to say for now. If you have questions, just add a comment. If you don't then you can still add a comment.
More later...
So with that out of the way, I'll fill in a bit of history for anyone who is interested. I'll skip the first 31 years of my life and cut to the chase.
For a while I worked at a large international company which I just refer to as the empire. I was a supervisor of about 20 people and lead a team or closer to 40. Our mission was to create and install a software package in the 40 international affiliates of the empire. Our first stop was Mexico where I spent close to three months solid working. As often as not this meant 20 hour days, seven days a week. In one particular two week period I put in more than 250 hours of work, averaging less than five hours of sleep a night. Needless to say this was a very high stress part of my life and the fact that I also chose to stop eating for the most part during this time probably didn't do my heart or body any favors. I dropped weight at an almost unimaginable rate. Anyway, after three months of this, I caught a plane at 5am followed by three more planes to make it home in time for Halloween, arriving at 6:30pm. Exactly a week later, I awoke to crushing chest pains and within days was recovering from my first heart surgery. That was an angioplasty.
Fast forward ten more years and I'm starting to have some symptoms again. This was last year, April I think. I was on this fitness kick which went well for a while until I realized that I could no longer make it more than a half mile on foot without feeling an odd pain in my shoulder. An odd pain that stopped once I stopped exercising. A few tests and a week later found me in the hospital. Another angioplasty, this time with a stint (a little wire cage to keep the artery open). During this operation they found that I had an artery in the lower region of the heart that was 100% closed. At the time, we didn't think it was a problem, and it probably isn't. That summer my daughters and I spent two weeks in Peru, including two awesome days climbing all over Machu Picchu. Magical, and totally impossible had my heart been giving me any problems.
Which brings us close to the present. About a month ago I realized that those odd shoulder pains had returned. After a few tests my cardiologist didn't think it was anything to worry about. However, at the insistence of both my general practioner and myself my cartiologist agreed that a catherization was in order. A catherization involves running a tube from the femoral artery into the heart, injecting die and taking a picture. The pictures were not so good, with a pretty ugly blockage very near to my aorta. To cut to the end of the story, the only option is bypass surgery which will fix this new blockage and that 100%-er from last year. I'm not going to go into any gory details, I'll leave that to the imagination or Google.
So here's the plan: I'm in the hospital at 6am on July 19th, surgery begins at 8am and is expected to be over by noon. Then there is a week in the hospital and a fairly long recovery at home (probably another four weeks at least). Am I a little bit scared, well that reminds me of what my instructor said just before my first (and last) skydive. There's only two types of people at this moment; those that are scared, and those that are liars. So yeah, I'm a bit scared, but not scared that something bad is going to happen, just scared of the unknown. Once, I get to the other side of the surgery, know the outcome and where I have to recover from, the fear will be gone.
And that's all I have to say for now. If you have questions, just add a comment. If you don't then you can still add a comment.
More later...
posted by Jack Dragon at 9:47 AM
5 Comments:
Just wishing you the best. I hope you have a speedy recovery.
Just letting you know we are praying that all will go well, and you'll be back in that pirate outfit by this Halloween!!
Thanks to everyone for your well wishess.
Andrew, yeah I tried the robotic route, and they have the robots, they just can't figure out how to shring them down to size. Plus that guy was inside R2D2 doesn't like the idea of kicking around insides someone's areteries. Go figure.
Jen, baby, the thought of the "Please don't die" cake overwhemed me. Happy now?
I am here from Snopes. You have my prayers. I have you on my blog roll and I'll be checking in on ya.
Architectural consultants in Dubai
Architecture firms in Dubai
Post a Comment
<< Home