Happy Re-birth Day

One year ago today I was reborn, given a second lease on life. The big scar down my chest I wear proudly. This photo was taken about a month after the operation. I like to say “Kids get tattoos. Real men get scars.”

Ha! What it says to me is how fortunate I was to have had this operation. This is diagram below of my heart. Is this not the ultimate act of sharing with your readers? You get to look inside my dark little heart. You can see the percentages, the blockages, but it offers little insight to my joys or heartbreaks. You don’t hear the beats, or see the blood. Not even the gravy. Do I need to elaborate on what fills an artery with life threatening blockages?

This the actual photo from the angiogram I had in May 2021. You can see clearly why I was short of breath, having 70%-90% blockages in my left coronary artery (aka the Widow Maker), and 90% in my right coronary artery. The hatch marked area in the RCA is the stent I had put in when I had my heart attack at age 49. What isn’t stated is the obverse: if your heart is blocked 70-90 %; you are running on 10-30%. A management fee. Running on fumes. Your agent called you?

I had the angiogram because I insisted. I was told by my cardiologist that the previous test looked ok. He paused. Although there might be something…..

I said given my illustrious family, “something”is always more than something. It could be a harbinger of heart attacks, strokes, heart failure.

So I insisted. What else could we do? Well, when was the last time you had an angiogram? 14 years previous, when I got the stent, after my heart attack in Atlanta. I wrote about that on my previous blog, www.densemilt.com

This post from 2007, over time, became this post I made one week after the operation.

This cardio condition runs in my genes, it’s in my blood, part of my bloodline. The discovery of this situation in May 2021 led to the decision that I was no longer a candidate for more stents. No Full Metal Jacket for this puppy. You have been upgraded to a Triple Bypass.

The triple bypass. More difficult than the double play. Tinker to Evers to Chance. I was originally scheduled to have one surgeon, then when I was informed of the operation, they said it would be someone different. I had put myself on a cancellation list and was called on Wednesday October 13. Can you come in for Friday? October 15. A few minutes later, can you actually come tomorrow? Yet another different surgeon. They are all good, right? St. Paul’s Hospital was where I had the operation. They have a world class cardio team. I was confident. Scared shirtless, but confident. I was told to get a Covid test.

I told my workmates that the time had come. I would see them in a few months. For a guy who rarely took vacations, it was almost impossible to conceive of not working for over three months, which is what I did.

The Covid test was brutal, but hey, they were going to crack open my chest, cut open my harvest leg, ( that’s what they call it), and from these scraps, some arteries from my chest and veins from my leg, they bypassed the original blockage. Like a highway overpass. Like a coverup. Easy breezy beautiful cover girl.

Here is my view after the operation.

Here is a view of the guy that my loved ones saw when they visited:

I was doing my best Harry Dean Stanton impression. The look in the photo is hardly flattering but it captures the fear, and exhaustion of a guy who had just gone through a 3-4 hour operation, and was now, God willing, reborn. A new man. I don’t really look like a “new man” here. More like an old man.

My friends and family were fabulous in their support. My wife coming every day. You really understand your connection to someone in those moments. She was and is my strength, my best friend, my soul mate. People would ask me how I was doing over the three and half months before I returned to work.

I would say, “Every day a little bit better. I wasn’t looking for the touchdown pass, the Hail Mary. No, this was a long haul. Minnesota Vikings vs the Chicago Bears in the snow. Yards. Inches. Increments.

Slowly, I gained more strength. Slowly I felt not like my old self, but like my new self. My new self began slowly. When they let me go home , I would have a shower on a chair, my wife sponge bathing me. I would take baby steps. I would be afraid to push, just letting everything heal in its own time.

But gradually I gained strength. And I started to exercise.

And I started to remake myself.