This post or perhaps series of posts are mostly for writing out my experience; as experiences go they are not very unique, so I do not claim to be sharing something special. Think of it as therapy -and since it is my blog, I can write whatever I want to. (Just a warning if you don’t find this whole thing particularly interesting.) It will be about a mitral valve repair surgery I had underwent -as heart surgeries go, it is the least invasive. Which is not saying much. It took me over a year to get over this, and there was nothing much else I thought was worth writing about.
First, we start two years ago. A set of routine examinations found that one of the tendons holding a mitral valve is broken, and there is a substantial amount of blood gushing back to the left ventricle. This is actually quite bad as the heart has to work much harder to keep up the blood flow. I visited three cardiologists, and they all said it did not require immediate surgery -because they were, quite frankly, out of touch with modern recommendations. Just to be absolutely safe I went to one of THE centers of heart surgery in Hungary, where I was immediately told after an ultrasound performed using a probe (which was an experience in itself as they stick that thing down your esophagus), that I will have to be operated upon or else. It actually made more sense than the previous opinions -those cardiologists said it could stay the way it was, only when it causes a problem did it have to fixed. Sure, wait until you develop a pathology before fixing it, right? It is only your heart, after all. What the surgeons said made more sense; after all, you do not wait to fix a break on your car until it fails, either. (Somewhat weak analogy, but that’s the best I can come up with.) This whole thing just underlies the importance of screening, really, and also to find competent doctors. Although it is really difficult to draw the line between asking for second and third opinions and going to doctors until you get the answer you want. In this case it was definitely not the case.)
COVID-19 did throw a wrench into the process, as I was told in February that there was a waiting list, and the earliest the operation can happen would be in August. Then September. Then November. Mind you, I went to the surgeon expecting to hear that I have at least twenty years before I had to undergo a surgery, and came out hearing that it would happen sometime this year. Quite a shock. I was told that the chances of fatal outcome are about 1% (as a comparison an appendectomy carries about 0.01% chance of death), and that there are about 2-3% chance of developing a complication. Not bad, you would say, and honestly, if someone said they had these chances, I would have tried to encourage them as these odds are quite good. There is a saying, though, in Hungary about beating the stinging nettle with someone else’s dick. Not a PC saying but it conveys the issue: it is much easier to be calm when it is about someone else’s skin. Anyhow, I got a surgeon assigned (a young guy), and then when I called him he told me I was reassigned to the head of department. This was somewhat of a surprise: the new guy was the national expert when it comes to performing these surgeries with an endoscope, which is welcome, but it also meant longer waiting lists as most everyone wanted to get under his knife… not to mention COVID’s 4th wave was set to strike precisely in November (as it actually did). So it was an interesting wait: hoping I will get the surgery before the virus shuts the hospitals down again, while not wanting to get the surgery because I feel fine and healthy.
I went on living my life, getting a new job, quitting my old one, expecting to hear from the hospital in November. Two days after I quit my job in September I was up to my ears in paint as I was painting the living room, when a phone call came. My wife handed me the phone white as a ghost – it was the hospital. They wanted me to come in the next Tuesday. It turns out there was a Peruvian professor who needed to be trained on this type of procedure, and I was put ahead of the list. (I guess my age and health status made me an ideal subject.)
Well, that put a stop to everything. I finished the room, and then we got on shopping and planning -after all I had to buy some stuff for the hospital (I do not have PJs, and I can’t possibly wear boxer shorts in the hospital for example), plus my family would have to plan a month alone. We told my daughter I was going to a remote work location…
The next Tuesday I got up early, got dressed, and feeling somewhat as a man going to his own execution (yes, it feels overly dramatic, but I was truly scared) left the house and drove to the hospital. I met my mother there who took the car back home. I checked in, and settled in. They put my name and date of birth on my bag just in case… it all felt surreal. There were obviously others in the hospital -surprisingly many young people with heart problems. Some were manufacturing errors, like mine, but quite a lot had damaged their hearts with their lifestyle. Scary. The whole day was surreal. Talking to fellow patients who were facing similar or more difficult surgeries and patients who already underwent them made the whole experience just unreal. I did know I was going to be cut up the next day, but it just did not register. Not truly.
fossiljellyfish 