Skipper's Posts

I just posted a photo of my wife and I celebrating our 14th anniversary by going for a kayak session on a local lake. We kayaked at Catalina Island in CA for our honeymoon, so I thought this would be a fitting commemoration. It made me think about my heart, where I've come, where I'm going, and then I started to think about this wonderful site. So here I am posting an update after a bit of a hiatus in the chance that there are others with the heart surgery sword-of-Damocles over their heads that might need encouragement. I've been pretty silent; last post was on March 25th (today is June 10th). This, I hope, is an encouragement to anyone who's facing heart surgery. It means that I've gotten busy with life, and the vagaries of surgery and recovery have taken a bit of a back-burner stance in my mind. What a wonderful thing to forget about surgery and MVP now and again! My message to any in fear: it WILL pass, and you WILL get your life back. After surgery, recovery was my life. I had a time where I couldn't get through a meal without taking a nap partway through, and then if I took a short, shuffling walk I'd have to take another nap. I'd be sore from just existing. But now? I go whole days without even thinking about the fact that I had surgery a few short months ago. Back to the kayaking. I've tried to exercise beyond simple walks and playing with my kid, but it always left me sore and drained. Yesterday's kayaking was tough to be sure, but I noticed something: after straining, I didn't feel winded. I wasn't "sucking air" like I would have been pre-surgery. This is the first time that I felt not just better than I was after surgery, but before! The surgery worked! This is not to say I'm at 100%; far from it. I still struggle, get tired, have soreness and numbness, and am on some medications. BUT this is the first taste of what might be to come: not just longer life than without the surgery, but better quality of life than before the surgery. That's exciting enough that I felt I should share. Since it's a pet concern of mine, I'm going to add a note on "pumphead": I feel like I'm all recovered from that. I managed an A- in a quantum field theory class that I was taking through this ordeal (it started before and ended after surgery), so I feel like there couldn't have been too marked of a cognitive dysfunction and it certainly doesn't seem lasting. I'm in the midst of writing a PhD proposal and doing a good bit of research, and I feel as lucid and capable as I did pre-diagnosis. My advice on pumphead is this: surgery is an extremely traumatic event; give your entire person, including your mind, time to recover. Be realistic with the fact that it will take time for body, mind, and soul to come back to normal. That's it from me for now. Keep up the fight!