Saturday, August 28, 2004

A question on heart surguries

The Terrible Swede has asked for a brief description as to why I have had to have my heart surguries. In layman's terms (and that's all I'm really good for) I had a hole in my heart (not the romantic kind) between two chambers. Along with that the valves going out of my heart were really small. I had my first correction when I was 2 days old, they took some veins from my left hand and strung them between my lungs and my heart so I could get enough oxygen, to do this they took out a rib (once again I'm missing a rib, but not in the romantic/biblical sense) and cut up my back pretty well, there is a good sized spot on my back that has no feeling in it (If I bend down in a certain way I can make it look like I have a hump in my back). Then when I was three I had a full correction where they replaced my valve with another valve (I am thinking one of the valves may have been pig... yeah I'm an unclean animal). Then when I was ten they had to do another operation, then when I was 13 they put in a stent, then when I was 18 they did another full correction. Each of these full corrections involve cracking open all the ribs in my chest, and replacing valves. The recovery time for each of these is about 6 weeks plus another 3 months or so on Didgoxen.
Hope that was helpful, maybe even entertaining.

1 comment:

The Terrible Swede said...

Thanks, Chris, for sharing such personal stuff. It was both helpful and entertaining. Can you do much cardio stuff?