Back from the Brink

Well it is July 11, and I just watched Spain defeat the Netherlands for the World Cup Championship!  Very tense and physical game, some would say boring, but I wasn't.  On July 2nd I underwent open heart surgery to make some repairs to my relatively young heart.  I was born with a defective aortic valve.  I found out about this 40 years ago, and knew that the day would come for surgery.  Good things have happened in medicine technology and technique since 1970.  In the early nineties I developed a non-lethal heart arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation.  It came and went (mostly went) over the next 20 years or so.  So now I had an irregular heartbeat, and a bum valve that would need replacing someday

Actually, the valve wasn't the problem.  In early June I found out that I had developed an aortic aneurysm, or an enlarging of the aorta as it rises from the upper heart chamber.  This "expansion" was quite significant and a real cause for concern.  At this size (diameter) the odds of survival to watch next year's world cup were better with the surgery than without it.  So I scheduled surgery.

I went "under the knife" on Friday July second.  At first things went fine, by Saturday I was off the ventilator and starting to eat solid (sort of) food.  Then my heart stopped.  My already sensitive heart "wiring" got upset with the abuse of the surgery, and just quit.  The folks at the hospital however, pulled me back from the abyss, with CPR and a defibrillator.  I was out of it for over 40 hours, and then began to steadily improve.  I spent some extra time giving my finicky heart a chance to quit pouting and come back into a steady rhythm.

Finally, after some very good investigative work by the doctors, it was determined that what I needed was a pace maker.  So, they double checked that the surgery was perfect, made sure there were no blood clots, installed a pacemaker, and shocked my heart back to work.

The pace maker is an incredible piece of technology.  Not only does it keep my heart on the job in a steady rhythm, but it has a built in defibrillator in case my heart decides to go on strike again.

I have never experienced heart symptoms that restricted my life in any way.  After this surgery, that won't change.  My biggest dissapointment is that I have to be hand searched at airport security, no wands allowed.
I can live with that!

So todays's World Cup championship took on a new sharpness and clarity.  It's great to be alive!!