Today is a weird day, being my last day at work for a while, but not due to sabbatical, changing a job, or vacation (I suppose eventual retirement could have a similar sort of feeling to it though). I will be OOTO until maybe the beginning to middle-ish of October, depending on how things go. Hopefully the rest of my hey-I’m-not-working TODO list won’t get in the way of putting together some more organized thoughts and information on the matter of heart surgery.
It is something that can potentially hit you out of nowhere, silently waiting over time, or if you are fortunate, it is something that sneaks up on you in the forest over the course of many years, occasionally and then more frequently snapping a twig and then hiding behind a tree, until you’ve decided that a) there is something following you and b) maybe it isn’t a feral kitten (or maybe it was a feral kitten but over time it got big and threatening).
If you’ve had some heartbeat weirdness or know someone who has, it’s probably not too early to head to the cardiologist. I remember having some issues many years ago but I was pretty “meh” about it at the time and chalked it up to caffeine or something. (if you are thinking of applying for life insurance, I’d consider getting that taken care of first, but don’t wait if things are feeling really freaky) If you are on the path to have heart valve surgery in the future, this site is a pretty decent patient resource: http://www.heart-valve-surgery.com/heart-surgery-blog/ by Adam Pick. There is good info and some … interesting … remarks by other patients. The facts in the patients’ remarks I’d take with a grain of salt, since clearly they aren’t experts in the field, but they are really helpful in getting an idea at least about how surgery patients feel about the experience they had, and troubles that they ran into related to the experience.