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.