Wish me luck!

[Todd Bradshaw]

Good luck Liam. I think you'll find that though it's certainly no picnic, it's not as bad as the anticipation. I had a valve replaced a couple days before Christmas, along with about 4" of my aorta that they replaced with a hunk of Dacron tubing, all to fix an upper aortic aneurism before it could blow out and kill me. All in all, I've actually had toothaches that caused me more discomfort than the whole process did.

Basically, you just go in and do what they tell you to do. Be prepared for them to constantly be interrupting you as you try to rest (which gets annoying) and don't be surprised if almost all food tastes really bad for a while. It took a couple months before my favorite foods finally started to taste "normal" again. They'll probably send you to cardiac rehab after a few weeks and the folks there will get you moving again and on the way back to normal. It's worth doing, especially considering the alternative. My main regret was that I wanted my wife to make me a flannel robe that was black up top with a tartan pleated lower section, for roaming the halls of the cardiac ward, but we never got around to making it.