Heart Surgery (Pt. 1 of 3 as of July 12)
[This is a repost of a post I made on Facebook on June 6th. I am reposting it here, backdated to June 6th, because I realized that I have friends who will not create Facebook accounts, and Livejournal posts can be made to require no authentication.]
There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it. It appears that I need heart surgery, but it appears to be fairly routine as such things go. Since birth I have had a bicuspid (I have two flaps instead of three, since two of the flaps never separated) aortic valve, which causes all sorts of fluid dynamic problems in the heart, and has left me with a circulatory system with deteriorating efficiency across the decades. My primary care physician had commented on my EKG recently, "you must feel tired all the time." I guess that's not normal.
With such a deteriorating system, eventually the (small) risk of surgery is exceeded by the risk of not doing anything. An aortic aneurysm (of 5.8 cm) that they detected in a recent CT scan and informed me of today puts me past the threshold (of 5.5 cm) of that risk.
So some time in the coming weeks they're gonna crack me open, fix the aorta, and replace the valve. It sounds like they'll install some sort of manifold, too. The best bet right now is that I'll be a chimera instead of bionic; I'm likely to have an animal tissue valve instead of a mechanical one (which is good, because a mechanical one necessitates blood thinners for the rest of your life, but is bad because the animal tissue valves last "decades," so I'll likely need to get it replaced down the road - but with FutureTech, which is a cool prospect).
I'll probably have a chest scar/seam, which might be a cool opportunity for various tattoo ideas.
The biggest downside (aside from the risk of walking into a hospital, having someone open your chest up, rearrange the insides, and close you up again) is that after I have the surgery, I'll be in a reduced physical condition for some portion of about six months.
The big upside, aside from the reduction of the chance of instant bad stuff at any time in my life, is that above I said some portion of six months, because at the end of six months it sounds like I should have, for the first time in my life, a fully functioning heart.
I wonder what that's like.
I've always dreaded diagnostics more than treatments. This is just a Thing That Has To Be Done, and the path is pretty well understood. Since we know what is needed now, It'll get done, and I'll endure it, probably sometimes with less grace than I would like, and that'll be that.
Anyway, I am talking about this here because I'm not looking for a lot of drama about it but want to get the basic gist of it out. I regret the extra amounts I'll have to lean on those close to me, and I regret that I probably won't be able to follow through in the near future on some social wheels that I had started to put in motion. I am uncomfortable with the thought of causing too much hand-wringing about it, it's a Thing That Must Be Done, and it'll get done, and walking across the street has risks, too. By all means feel free to express your own feelings, but I'm not looking for sympathy - I am lucky to live in a time when this sort of procedure is routine, but unlucky that it isn't yet an outpatient procedure, or a matter of pressing a button on FutureTech, or fixed in the womb with a simple pill. Hugs are welcome because hugs are *always* welcome.
[I have a bunch of friends with various degrees of medical training, and I ask you all; please don't take this as an opportunity to engage me on medical issues on, or diagnose me over, Facebook. If you want to talk to me about details, please do so in private, and I might or might respond quickly - I am still absorbing this news and figuring out what it will mean in concrete terms and I almost certainly have gotten at least some important details wrong or sloppy. I have met with my cardiologist, but not yet the thoracic surgeon.]
Appended in another post:
I really wish I could add an edit to my prior post, in the form of a statement that my gratitude and love goes out to the incredibly awesome women in my immediate life, Rebecca, Casey, and of course, my mother Jean, for all of the love and support they have given me and the support they show every sign of offering in the future.
There's a large degree, I think, to which this will be the end of a specific decades-long horrific anxiety on my mother's part.
There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it. It appears that I need heart surgery, but it appears to be fairly routine as such things go. Since birth I have had a bicuspid (I have two flaps instead of three, since two of the flaps never separated) aortic valve, which causes all sorts of fluid dynamic problems in the heart, and has left me with a circulatory system with deteriorating efficiency across the decades. My primary care physician had commented on my EKG recently, "you must feel tired all the time." I guess that's not normal.
With such a deteriorating system, eventually the (small) risk of surgery is exceeded by the risk of not doing anything. An aortic aneurysm (of 5.8 cm) that they detected in a recent CT scan and informed me of today puts me past the threshold (of 5.5 cm) of that risk.
So some time in the coming weeks they're gonna crack me open, fix the aorta, and replace the valve. It sounds like they'll install some sort of manifold, too. The best bet right now is that I'll be a chimera instead of bionic; I'm likely to have an animal tissue valve instead of a mechanical one (which is good, because a mechanical one necessitates blood thinners for the rest of your life, but is bad because the animal tissue valves last "decades," so I'll likely need to get it replaced down the road - but with FutureTech, which is a cool prospect).
I'll probably have a chest scar/seam, which might be a cool opportunity for various tattoo ideas.
The biggest downside (aside from the risk of walking into a hospital, having someone open your chest up, rearrange the insides, and close you up again) is that after I have the surgery, I'll be in a reduced physical condition for some portion of about six months.
The big upside, aside from the reduction of the chance of instant bad stuff at any time in my life, is that above I said some portion of six months, because at the end of six months it sounds like I should have, for the first time in my life, a fully functioning heart.
I wonder what that's like.
I've always dreaded diagnostics more than treatments. This is just a Thing That Has To Be Done, and the path is pretty well understood. Since we know what is needed now, It'll get done, and I'll endure it, probably sometimes with less grace than I would like, and that'll be that.
Anyway, I am talking about this here because I'm not looking for a lot of drama about it but want to get the basic gist of it out. I regret the extra amounts I'll have to lean on those close to me, and I regret that I probably won't be able to follow through in the near future on some social wheels that I had started to put in motion. I am uncomfortable with the thought of causing too much hand-wringing about it, it's a Thing That Must Be Done, and it'll get done, and walking across the street has risks, too. By all means feel free to express your own feelings, but I'm not looking for sympathy - I am lucky to live in a time when this sort of procedure is routine, but unlucky that it isn't yet an outpatient procedure, or a matter of pressing a button on FutureTech, or fixed in the womb with a simple pill. Hugs are welcome because hugs are *always* welcome.
[I have a bunch of friends with various degrees of medical training, and I ask you all; please don't take this as an opportunity to engage me on medical issues on, or diagnose me over, Facebook. If you want to talk to me about details, please do so in private, and I might or might respond quickly - I am still absorbing this news and figuring out what it will mean in concrete terms and I almost certainly have gotten at least some important details wrong or sloppy. I have met with my cardiologist, but not yet the thoracic surgeon.]
Appended in another post:
I really wish I could add an edit to my prior post, in the form of a statement that my gratitude and love goes out to the incredibly awesome women in my immediate life, Rebecca, Casey, and of course, my mother Jean, for all of the love and support they have given me and the support they show every sign of offering in the future.
There's a large degree, I think, to which this will be the end of a specific decades-long horrific anxiety on my mother's part.