A Year After Surgery

A year ago, yesterday I was lying in the hospital...Shands Cardiovascular to be more precise...recovering on the intensive care floor from the previous day's open-heart surgery.  It was elective: I walked right on in there, knowing in advance I was in for some pretty deep "stuff" for the ensuing weeks.  Nine years earlier, the problems leading to this event were diagnosed: a defective heart valve, bicuspid and congenital, most likely leading up to the adjacent aortic aneurism.  But my thoracic surgeon wasn't ready for surgery then, but rather had me returning for annual echo cardiograms and CT scans to measure the aneurism's width.  It wasn't until 2021 that he decided to go ahead with the procedure, not because of the aneurism, which had not grown over this time span but rather because the valve looked "chunky" with some deposits.  That was in late April and, after some hemming and hawing around, I decided to go ahead and get it over with.  The stay at Shands was ultimately a positive experience although the heart did go into atrial fibrillation post-surgery, a common enough occurrence. The recovery period focused on allowing my sternum to fuse back together and for me to regain motion and strength in my upper body. In August I began to run a little on my own, but it wasn't until late October after my return to work that I was able to circuit my .7-mile home block...in December I ran a 5K race and, in February this year, ran Gainesville's local half-marathon.  Although I am taking daily medications chiefly from my cardiologist's concerns about potentially recurring a-fib, my life seems to going on fully normally without restriction.  I'm blessed and grateful, both for living in such a time and place to be able to undergo such complicated and delicate surgery and postoperative care and to have the means to pay for it...as well as the loving support of my family and friends, most especially Melissa.  So, I'm back to living each day one day at a time...let's see what the rest of today brings!