You Gotta Have Heart

I’m going in for open heart surgery today. Yup. Despite leading a relatively clean life -- never smoking, never drinking, never using drugs (and barely using prescription drugs) -- I end up with a genetic heart defect that necessitates surgery. The bad news is that I’ll be out of commission for up to two months, if everything goes well; the good news is, despite what so many people have thought, I actually do have a heart. So there.

This odyssey began more than five years ago. I’ll spare you the details aside from saying that three years ago my cardiologist said my heart was fine and nothing was wrong; yet last year my general doctor was so concerned with my heart murmur that she suggested I go back to the cardiologist. Which I did. And that’s when they found it. Oh, well.

The surgery involves cracking open my sternum, cutting open my heart and shaving off part of the septum (the muscle that separates the left and right chambers of the heart) because it’s gotten too big and interferes with the flow of blood. It’s a relatively common surgery with a huge success and survival rate, so my odds are good. In addition, they’ll be replacing one of my heart valves and maybe installing a microwave oven, or a pacemaker, I forget which.

I’ll be adding updates to this blog as I can, but it might be a while before I’m back in the saddle again, so to speak.