Putting my heart into it!
I’m back!
Cue the fanfare, pop the champagne, drop the balloons and the confetti. I was told there would be fanfare, balloons, and confetti. What do you mean there’s no Champagne?
Not even a glass Spumante?
It’s been a couple of months since I last wrote to you. I went away for a few months with some medical issues. One medical issue. A big one.
I had a Triple Bypass.
It was a surprise. I went into the hospital thinking I had acid reflux, and the doctor decided to keep me. I’m glad I didn’t pop a handful of Tums, roll over, and go back to bed, or you’d need a Ouija Board to contact me.
I underwent a series of tests. The good news is that I didn’t have to study for them. The bad news is that the test revealed a heart condition.
The night before the surgery, the nurse asked me if I wanted Xanax to help me sleep. I waved her away. Then, the surgeon explained the procedure to me. He was calm. I was not. When he said, “Most patients survive, but not all of them,” I asked for that Xanax.
He took veins from my legs to make pathways to my heart.
Side note: Did you know we have spare veins? There are veins in your body right now that are just hanging out waiting to be used for something important. This was a surprise to me. I thought everything in there was important. I didn’t realize I was carrying around spare parts.
But I digress, like I do, or like I used to. There is one person I never want to see again…the nurse who shaved me (Sounds like a bad Bond film… “The Nurse Who Shaved Me”).
Before the operation, the aforementioned nurse came in with a disposable razor and said that she had to shave me from head to toe. She brought one razor. She had no idea what she was dealing with. She should have brought a weed-whacker.
P.S. She had to shave the whole front half of my body. I looked thirteen again. I was a dolphin in the front and a bear in the back. There was a definitive line on the sides of my body, the freshly mowed ball field next to the woods.
Then, the doctor took out his sewing kit from his blue tin of Danish butter cookies, grabbed those spare veins from my legs, and sewed them to my heart, literally making a bypass, like a little blue highway. I pictured a road crew in yellow vests hanging out at the major arteries, one bored-looking crew member holding up a “Slow” sign.
Did I mention he had cut my sternum in half to get in there? He spatchcocked me like a chicken.
During the six weeks of recovery, I watched a lot of Food Network shows.
The important part is that I’m stitched up and ready for the road again.