What I Learned from Open Heart Surgery at 22 Years Old

Less than a month after graduating college, I underwent open heart surgery to repair my bicuspid aortic valve.

I was lucky.

About two percent of the population is born with this faulty valve, though it frequently goes undetected. While it doesn’t always result in side effects, an undetected BAV is one of the many reasons you may see thirty or forty or fifty-year-olds drop dead unexpectedly from heart failure or an aneurysm.

I was lucky too because it gave me something to say when people asked, What are you going to do after graduation?

Instead of saying, I’ve got no idea, I could say, I’ll figure it out after I get my chest sawed open. Ah, what a relief.

But as scary as open heart surgery may sound, it ain’t all that bad. If you’re reading this in preparation for your own heart surgery, try not to panic just yet (impossible, I know). All things considered, I’m glad I went through the whole thing. And if you’re not preparing for heart surgery, these words of advice will certainly apply to you too.

Life is Fragile

Shortly after waking up from surgery, I was informed that my heart wouldn’t start on it’s own, and so they gave me an external pacemaker. The pacemaker was a clunky, brick-sized, walkie-talkie sort of thing. Picture a 90’s video game console.

A bundle of wires ran from the box into my stomach, then up into my heart (more bad-ass scars). You’d think that by 2018 someone would have invented safer pacemaker wires, but no: these were long, thin, loose wires that dragged on the floor if I didn’t hold them in a bundle when I walked around.

Watch out for door knobs, the nurses said, You don’t want those wires ripping out.

When I asked what would happen if they did get pulled out, no one explicitly said I would die, but they did tell me my heart would instantly drop to near zero. And I didn’t want to imagine falling and hitting the floor post-heart surgery.

While at first the idea of walking around with a death-box scared me, I quickly came to terms with it. By doing so, I developed a better appreciation for life.

Everyday, we are constantly teetering on the brink of death, even without an external pacemaker dangling at our side. Slipping in the shower, driving, gas leaks, choking, loose telephone wires, earthquakes (sorry California), nuclear warfare, meteors…okay, okay, sorry, maybe you can tell I’m a little neurotic.

The point is, one of the best ways to live fearlessly is to remind yourself that the line between life and death is as thin as those wires attached to my pacemaker.

And yes, they did give me a safer internal pacemaker, but my appreciation for life is still there.

Never Have Expectations

Things can and will go wrong.

First they gave me too much anesthesia, so I was under for 18 hours and needed to pee out of a catheter for several days afterward (TMI, I know).

Then the administrative side of things made a mistake and never informed my cardiologist I was having surgery. I wasn’t visited by a doctor once during my whole recovery.

Without informing me, they put me on Prozac for a couple days in a preemptive attempt to stop post operative depression.

They took me off of painkillers not 24 hours after surgery due to the opioid crisis, until I woke up howling in pain in the middle of the night.

And like I said earlier, my heart wouldn’t work properly afterwards, hence the pacemaker.

It may sound like I’m complaining, but I sincerely do not view these as bad things. It’s all about perspective.

These things only reaffirmed my belief that we are all human beings and therefore we will all be wrong most of the time. If you always expect things to not work out, then you’ll be miles ahead — both emotionally and practically — of the person who expects everything to go as planned. And when things do work out, you’ll be twice as thrilled.

This does not mean you should adopt a negative mindset. What I mean is that you should do an action for the action itself, not for the result. Ya know, the whole journey-not-the-destination thing?

There is a Bright Side to Everything

Let me say this first: open heart surgery is very painful. Given the choice (there’s usually not a choice), I’d say run for the hills. BUT. If you do go under the knife, it’s not as bad as you might think.

The worst part is the time between when they tell you that you need open heart surgery, and when the anesthesiologist tells you to count to ten (I couldn’t even make it to three).

Leading up to surgery, you may keep yourself up at night with questions like, What if I wake up in the middle of surgery? What if I don’t wake up at all?

And when you do wake up after the surgery, well — I’ll tell you bluntly. It feels like you’ve been hit by a bus.

But there is a silver lining to everything. Yes, you’re in pain. But if you focus on the present moment, even the most excruciating pain can be tolerated. Not two seconds in the future, not two weeks in the past, not, when will this be over?

I’m not saying reality can’t be bad. I’m just saying that nothing is ever as bad as we make it out to be.

So like all things in life, it comes down to perspective. Ugly slit down your chest? More like a bad-ass scar to show off at the beach. Can’t move freely for a couple months? More like you get to have people wait on you like a king.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

When you come out on the other side, little things will feel like a blessing. Like being able to shower without feeling like you just ran a marathon.

So when all is said and done, the open heart surgery was actually the best graduation gift I could have asked for. Of course, I’m glad that I don’t have tubes sticking out of my abdomen, or that I don’t need to sleep sitting up, or need help going to the bathroom.

Nothing like some good ol’ adversity.

And like I said before: it makes for one bad-ass scar.