It’s that time of the year again - February 11th ... 8 years ago today, I was dead. They made me dead. Only to bring me back to life, if I (and if they) was (were) lucky ... And lucky I was and lucky I am today, too.
Eight years ago today, I had my open-heart surgery. My big, scary, always-had-known-I-would-need-it-one-day surgery ... Every year, on this date, I skim through my operative report and I feel humbled, small, and oh, so beyond-words grateful for everything that came together to save my life and give me a new lease (renewed now for the 8th year) on life ...
I went into the surgery with 3 diagnoses. After the good man, Dr. John Mitchell from the Provo Utah Valley Hospital and his team, were done with me (after 12 and a half hours or so), they put down on paper 5 diagnoses ...
I went into the surgery with 3 diagnoses. After the good man, Dr. John Mitchell from the Provo Utah Valley Hospital and his team, were done with me (after 12 and a half hours or so), they put down on paper 5 diagnoses ...
Some scary stuff! Each one of the 5 diagnoses is enough to independently kill someone. I, ever the overachiever, needed to have not one but 5 risks for cardiac death ...
But God and fate were not done with me. I do remember when going in that I told my family: I am not scared that this will kill me. I feel like there is so much more life after this for me. I feel like it’ll be hard, but I will make it ... That premonition or guess has come true ...
There has been so much life after that day ... There have been trips, and new jobs, and meeting new people, and spending time with our families and friends. There has been learning and trying new things, shooting (maybe) millions more pictures, and squeezing more kitties ... There has been building of memories, watching nephews grow and become almost young people now.
There have been some of the biggest heartaches of my life too. It’s like they prepared me for what was to come by fixing my heart to be able to take more sadness: loss of jobs, loss of friends, moved across the country, our kitty died alone when we were traveling, a parent got cancer, we buried another parent ... But my heart keeps going ...
Just like the good doctor said in one of the days after the surgery while I was still in the hospital: it was “up and at them after I left the hospital”. I guess I never quite felt like “up and at ‘em” to me, exactly (I felt as slow as a snail and as weak as a feather), but compared to that day, when I was practically dead, with the heart-lung machine breathing and beating for me, it must have felt like “up and at ‘em” even if all I did was little as getting out of bed in the morning ...
But I have been lucky to do much more than that ...
After learning my new routine in the first couple of years, I have been able to have a new life, a different life than before, but still a good one.
The operation (or, as you can see from the operative report excerpt above the “operations”) did change my entire life’s routine: the anticoagulant forces me to manage my food even more closely than I normally do, it also has me OCD paranoid about measuring my INR (blood “thickness” levels) weekly and I never leave the house for more than a week without my INR machine; I get tired easier than before, still; I have learned how to live with permanent neuropathy in my left arm which still feels like my hand is permanently stuck in a bucket of ice; my chest still feels different than ever before, including my spine and ribs - it cramps and it hurts at certain times; my medical wires left in my chest forever after the surgery still poke into my chest wall at times (and I have not figured out why and when they act out); my blood pressure has been on a new and more noisy roller coaster than ever before, my heart muscle is stiffer and it needs extra meds to relax ... and I could go on and on ... Living through increased inflammation and through several years of Covid that threatened to kill people like me, with a cardiac condition and with high cholesterol, has meant yet a new way of life. A new lesson in living this new, changed life ...
Yes, things have changed. But what I now know for sure is that we are adaptable. We learn to grow around the boulders put in our path, and still are able to shoot towards the skies, kicking and screaming ...
I have a much better understanding of limitations and of giving up things to feel “normal” ... But I also cherish every second of every accomplishment of just going through the day and the night and waking up to a new morning day after day ... There is no price I can place on this blessing and this gift called life ...
But God and fate were not done with me. I do remember when going in that I told my family: I am not scared that this will kill me. I feel like there is so much more life after this for me. I feel like it’ll be hard, but I will make it ... That premonition or guess has come true ...
There has been so much life after that day ... There have been trips, and new jobs, and meeting new people, and spending time with our families and friends. There has been learning and trying new things, shooting (maybe) millions more pictures, and squeezing more kitties ... There has been building of memories, watching nephews grow and become almost young people now.
There have been some of the biggest heartaches of my life too. It’s like they prepared me for what was to come by fixing my heart to be able to take more sadness: loss of jobs, loss of friends, moved across the country, our kitty died alone when we were traveling, a parent got cancer, we buried another parent ... But my heart keeps going ...
Just like the good doctor said in one of the days after the surgery while I was still in the hospital: it was “up and at them after I left the hospital”. I guess I never quite felt like “up and at ‘em” to me, exactly (I felt as slow as a snail and as weak as a feather), but compared to that day, when I was practically dead, with the heart-lung machine breathing and beating for me, it must have felt like “up and at ‘em” even if all I did was little as getting out of bed in the morning ...
But I have been lucky to do much more than that ...
After learning my new routine in the first couple of years, I have been able to have a new life, a different life than before, but still a good one.
The operation (or, as you can see from the operative report excerpt above the “operations”) did change my entire life’s routine: the anticoagulant forces me to manage my food even more closely than I normally do, it also has me OCD paranoid about measuring my INR (blood “thickness” levels) weekly and I never leave the house for more than a week without my INR machine; I get tired easier than before, still; I have learned how to live with permanent neuropathy in my left arm which still feels like my hand is permanently stuck in a bucket of ice; my chest still feels different than ever before, including my spine and ribs - it cramps and it hurts at certain times; my medical wires left in my chest forever after the surgery still poke into my chest wall at times (and I have not figured out why and when they act out); my blood pressure has been on a new and more noisy roller coaster than ever before, my heart muscle is stiffer and it needs extra meds to relax ... and I could go on and on ... Living through increased inflammation and through several years of Covid that threatened to kill people like me, with a cardiac condition and with high cholesterol, has meant yet a new way of life. A new lesson in living this new, changed life ...
Yes, things have changed. But what I now know for sure is that we are adaptable. We learn to grow around the boulders put in our path, and still are able to shoot towards the skies, kicking and screaming ...
I have a much better understanding of limitations and of giving up things to feel “normal” ... But I also cherish every second of every accomplishment of just going through the day and the night and waking up to a new morning day after day ... There is no price I can place on this blessing and this gift called life ...
First day after the surgery, in the ICU. And 8 years later ...
