How fragile we are...

It's been a rough summer... Peter, my grandfather and one uncle have each succumbed to cancer of one sort or another. Then, my father's crappy mitral valve, which had already been replaced once, decided to throw in the towel. (That's my Pa, at right.)

Dad underwent open heart surgery for mitral valve replacement (MVR) yesterday. He had a St. Jude Valve put in (which is nice because it only permits blood flow in one direction). Open heart surgery is an amazing thing... once one understands what it involves, one quickly becomes amazed that we can do any of this stuff without killing a person.

In short, they put the patient under general anesthesia and saw open the sternum so they can have access to the heart. That sounds wild, but the really wild part is how they operate on the heart itself. Naturally, a surgeon can't operate invasively on a beating heart full of blood... so they re-route the blood flow (via cardiopulmonary bypass) and then stop the heart and inject a very cold preservative (via cardioplegia) into the heart. In this manner, they can operate on the heart for many hours. It sounds crazy, I know... but, considering that the perioperative mortality rate for MVR with a St. Jude's valve was only 6% in 1983, his odds were significantly better than 1 in 17.

My Dad just called me, the day after this procedure... they've moved him out of ICU. He says it feels like he got hit by a truck with a very large blade on the front of it.

Here's to staying healthy. In this vein (yuk yuk), I'm going to pledge to loose a few pounds and eat healthier (less animal protein).