Been there, done that, wrote about it

It's mildly depressing to have new ideas for blog posts to express so eloquently my keen insights, only to realize that I've already made that point in one of the many blog posts I've made starting in early 2019. Of course not too many people have read those blog posts, but then again not many will read new ones either.

One reason to be discouraged is that despite how keen my insights may be, and how clearly I am right, the world has rarely come around to my point of view. Maybe, if we're lucky (knock on wood) it will come around to a majority view that Donald Trump is a disaster, and of a sufficient majority that Democrats will control House, Senate, and Presidency. Yet even that will not usher in some golden age.

Another reason to be discouraged is that it shows my declining memory. Perhaps it is not pathological; perhaps it is common in people my age, but I still don't like it. I don't like it at all. It's nice to be able to remember what you've written. There is of course the common experience in dealing with the elderly that they will tell you the same story over and over. I cringe at the possibility that I might become one of those people. It give me some inclination to just keep quiet more often. That seems unfortunate too.

So in the service of not re-inventing the wheel, but distinguish which inventions are wheels and which are lava lamps, I can think of some old posts I think are really important in my view of the world, and give some links to them here:

Polling vs Interrupts on unusual genders

Social mobility isn't important

The cosmic subtraction problem (life and death).

A critique of 'Privilege'

No objective morality

Evolution as the key to understanding

Heart Surgery

I am due to undergo surgery for the repair of my heart's mitral valve on November 9th.  This is not optional, as I will get worse and die without repairing or replacing the valve, though I guess it might take years. The surgery is a big deal, in the sense that I'm to be on a heart-lung machine for hours, and recovery will take days.

The surgeon told me that the 30-day survival rate was something over 99%. So that's very encouraging.

And yet, of course, there's that other one percent. And from a Yankee heritage, there's that irresistible impulse to always consider, "Well, let's make sure we understand the worst case here."

For one thing, it led me to look back again at my <"mortality" post> from 13 years ago:

Yep, I haven't thought much about the inevitability of death in the interim. But I can't think of anything to add.

It occurred to me that from a mortality point of view, the situation I'm in has some pluses. First, since there is this small probability of death, anyone who has some deep confession to make to clear the air between us has the chance to do it. Second, the chances of death are small enough that I'm actually going to be going under expecting to make it (yet prepared to "wish I were dead" as I deal with the post-op recovery). And of course, if I do die on the operating table, I'll never know it. No fear and no pain.

The number of tests I have to undergo before the surgery is astonishing (tiny example: twelve vials of blood today). I take that as both an indication of how serious the surgery is, while also realizing that the purpose of each test is to make the whole thing slightly safer for me.

The most common heart surgery is what the insiders call "cabbages", coronary artery bypass surgery. It is lessening the impact of the serious chronic illness of coronary artery disease, but the disease continues. Valve repair surgery is apparently quite different, in that once the valve is fixed, it's fixed, with only a very small chance that some other valve problem will occur in the future.