This board has been very helpful to myself, and obviously others, who need to lean on the experience of others to cope with something quite scary to them. I have spent the past few years fretting, worrying, studying, contemplating, all the different things that are happening to me physically, or could happen to me when I have my surgery early next month. And it seemed like the worst thing I would ever have to overcome.
Until October 22, 2012. I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance for the first time in my life, and spent a week in cardiac ER. After an angiogram, echo scan, and CT scan; a 4.5 ascending aortic aneurysm was found on my aorta above my heart. From an active 44 year old football coach, who has never smoked, doesn't drink, never has taken drugs, and slim and athletic with quote, "the blood pressure of an 18 year old", to a life threatening situation that I inherited from my illustrious DNA at birth, but never knew. This is the same thing John Ritter passed away with.
They do the same thing with aneurysm's as they do with AN's. They wait until they reach 5.0cm and then do open heart surgery to repair. The reason, more death's occur on the operating table than dissect and burst before 5.0cm. Playing the odds.
Now my doctors are discussing what needs to happen as we prepare for what I thought was the surgery event and recovery of my life next month. Instead, this AN surgery is feeling very incidental to what my real challenge is going to be in future, if I am lucky enough to make it there.
I thought I had it pretty bad. I felt that I was really unlucky getting an AN for reasons no one could tell me. But, now getting the news of the AA for no reasons at all as well, it feels quite certain I have made Mother Nature pretty angry at some point along the way.
I have a great wife and son, and have always felt blessed and lucky, I didn't need any reminders to appreciate them. But, I didn't think it could get worse than an AN in my prime working years. I was wrong.
