My father’s side of the family has an inauspicious history of heart disease over the generations, and recently, my part in the story came due. Men in my family tend to die at or before the age of sixty-five from heart attacks or other heart-related issues. I’m only fifty-four, but the family history has long hung over my head like a sword of Damocles. My dad had a heart attack around his mid-fifties, so I felt the clock ticking. In my early forties, I consulted with a cardiologist over consistent heart palpitations (due in no small part to my affinity for energy drinks). I subjected myself to a rigorous stress test and emerged with a clean bill of health. I wiped the sweat off my brow and went my merry way. But the ghosts of family past continued to haunt me. My primary care physician retired last year, so I visited a new PCP in my community and quickly informed her of our family’s history of heart disease. She suggested I have a calcium scan done. I had never heard of this procedure, but decided it wouldn’t hurt. A calcium scan detects calcium deposits in or around the heart arteries, though it does not necessarily indicate blockages or their severity. The scale runs from 0 to 400, with risk severity divided into 100-point increments. I scored a 656! Off the charts! My brow furrowed with concern. My PCP recommended me to a cardiologist, and we had a consultation. He suggested calcium scores are not necessarily indicative of dangerous blockages. Calcium can build up outside the arteries without obstructing blood flow. He recommended an angiogram procedure whereby they insert a catheter through the vein in my wrist and navigate to my heart. They then inject a dye and, using X-rays, they see how well the blood flows through my major heart arteries. The cardiologist informed me that if blockages are detected, he would insert a stent to open the blood flow to my heart. One or more stents may be necessary. It sounded easy, fairly painless, with the end result being peace of mind about my overall heart health. Without hesitation, I signed on for the procedure. They scheduled it for a Monday morning.

Considering the chaos that soon followed, the angiogram passed uneventfully. I don’t really remember anything about it other than the post-op consultation. The cardiologist delivered the bad news in the most cheerful manner possible. He started by telling me they didn’t put any stents in. I cocked my head slightly, knowing intuitively this was not the good news it sounded like on the surface. He then rocked my world with the following numerical horrors: I had a 100% blockage in one artery, 99% in my widowmaker, and a 91% in a third heart artery. He made no bones about the fact that I needed a triple bypass surgery in short order. He made me an appointment with a surgeon at the Heart Hospital for the following day. I must admit I took the news in stride – probably because of the disconnected loopiness effect of the anesthesia. Tuesday, I met with the surgeon. He showed me the X-ray video of the dye injections and how the blood flow stopped dead in their tracks as they travelled through my heart arteries. I looked at the surgeon and earnestly asked, “How am I not dead?” He had me look closer at the video. He pointed out how the blood diverted at the blockage point through a series of small capillaries my body had created in response to the hardened calcium deposits. They gave my heart just enough blood flow to prevent a massive coronary. It surprised me that they didn’t wheel me into a pre-op room and begin preparation for emergency surgery on the spot. They suggested a surgery date a full week out. However, my concerned wife wanted it done ASAP. Fortunately, an opening for Friday morning at 8:00 AM became available.

A week of whirlwind emotions just intensified into a full F5 tornado. From a routine angiogram on Monday to open-heart surgery on Friday. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. The surgeon briefed me on the nature of the procedure, but I paid scant attention to the details, other than my chances of survival and how much pain I would be in afterward. Knowing myself as I do, the more I knew about the procedure, the higher my anxiety would rise, so I made a concerted effort not to Google “triple bypass surgery” in the days beforehand. I didn’t want to hear the gruesome details of the surgery. Knowing that my breastbone would be sawn asunder, my rib cage splayed open, my heart stopped, and my coronary plumbing getting completely rewired constituted more information than I really needed. I also didn’t care to hear personal stories about how the procedure went for other people. I honestly desired to remain ignorant of what came next as I proceeded through the surgery process. I wanted to take everything as it came. I disdained to discourage myself with thoughts of all the things that would come next. This strategy worked wonders. The night before surgery, we stayed at a hotel down the street from the hospital. Pre-op check-in time was 5:00 AM, and I had no interest in getting up in the middle of the night to drive an hour to our destination. I didn’t sleep well, mostly because I lay in a strange bed in an unfamiliar place, without the comforting drone of my bedside fan. Otherwise, my anxiety did not get out-of-hand. I had a calmness, a peace surpassing all understanding I couldn’t explain. I knew what I faced and felt a calmness in my spirit. I kept a couple of Scripture verses rolling around in my head. Primarily Isaiah 26:3-4. I knew God would remain faithful. I kept Him at the center of my thoughts, and He, in turn, granted me a perfect peace. I slept about four hours and awoke feeling surprisingly refreshed.

It’s not really my intention in this article to describe the gory details of the procedure, but to chronicle its effects and how the serious nature of the trauma inflicted upon my body affected my body, mind, and spirit in the following days and weeks. Immediately upon emerging from my anesthesia-induced stupor, I awoke in the ICU surrounded by family. This immediately soothed my anxiety. But it must be said in no uncertain terms that open-heart surgery is a severe body trauma – unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I broke my wrist at 12 years old, trying to complete my first BMX stunt. I had to have surgery to set my bones back into position. Until now, that is the worst trauma I’ve ever experienced. But this rose to an entirely new level. I felt like Humpty Dumpty; shattered beyond all hope of repair. All the king’s doctors and all the king’s nurses couldn’t put me back together again. This kind of surgery is, in fact, a type of death and resurrection. I know that sounds dramatic, but let me explain. The surgery team actually stopped my heart so they could complete the bypass grafts. My circulatory system depended on a machine to sustain me. They put me on a ventilator, so I wasn’t even breathing on my own. Post-surgery, my bowels, after my body sustained such a severe shock, needed to be restarted. Ok, maybe ‘resurrection’ is overkill, but as an IT professional for over twenty years, I’m confident I can safely use the metaphor Total System Reboot. I had to start over. My heart had to start beating again. It had to take over pumping blood throughout my entire body. I had to learn to breathe on my own again ( I had some trouble breathing independently briefly after the surgery). Added to that, I had to learn to breathe deeply again with the help of an infernal breathing mechanism. My digestive system had to gear up and start churning again.

This total system reboot is comprehensive. Not just my body needed a reset, so did my mental faculties. Brain fog is an issue I deal with on occasion, but post-op, I couldn’t think straight enough to form a complete sentence in my head. I had packed up my Kindle to read while passing the long hospital hours, but I could no more read a single page of text than I could climb the walls like Spider-Man. I could not focus on much of anything. I could watch football on the TV, but that’s about all I could focus on. This foggy lack of focus affected my desires. I couldn’t enjoy the things I loved. I couldn’t read a good book. I couldn’t study my Bible or engage with the latest contemporary theological issues. I couldn’t focus enough to play video games for more than 15 minutes. My wife had purchased a new game for me to try out when I got home. I couldn’t get into it. I had trouble learning new controls and mechanics. I leaned on games I knew inside and out and found some pleasure in those. It took a full two weeks to complete the mental focus reboot process. I submit as proof this self-evident fact: four weeks removed from the operating table, I have mustered enough cognitive juju to put together a somewhat coherent article chronicling the entire spectrum of surgery and post-op recovery, so the fog of anesthesia does recede in due time.

Disconcertedly, I discovered my emotional wiring developed a short after surgery. Perhaps this is a feature rather than a bug. My peaks and valleys leveled out for the entirety of my four-day stay at the hospital and for a solid week after I came home. I’m an emotional guy by nature, and losing connection with the feels left me with alien sensations I can only describe as a kind of plunge into oblivion. This fed into the spiritual vacuum I experienced. I should have felt gratitude for coming through the surgery as well as I did. Gratitude is one of the keys to the sanctified life, but after emerging from a life-threatening situation in relatively good condition, I just felt nothing. As a consequence, I felt distant from God. I couldn’t feel His presence. It’s almost as if He hadn’t been allowed inside the hospital walls. This bothered me a great deal. I couldn’t understand it. I felt for a brief moment that I had been abandoned by God at the surgery table. I couldn’t whip up a desire to compose any kind of prayer. As my mind cleared over the next couple of weeks, I came to understand this was just part of the total system reboot. My emotions, my desires, and my spiritual awareness all slowly returned to me. I am grateful for that, and I can actually feel that gratitude, as well as God’s shining countenance upon me. It’s not as if God had actually abandoned me in my critical moment; I just got disconnected from the part of me that feels as well as the part of me that thinks. Whether this is the result of the general anesthesia, the severe body trauma, or some combination of both, I am not certain. I can’t say the cords were cut off completely, only that my capacity to think, desire, and feel became discombobulated. The reboot brought all my systems back online, slowly, over a week and a half. Now, four weeks removed from surgery, I am pretty much back to normal in many ways. I’m still on medical leave from work, but I’m walking, driving, cooking, washing dishes, cleaning the yard, and doing other small tasks. I don’t have much pain. I take a muscle relaxer at night to help me sleep comfortably. My right leg, where they harvested veins for my bypass, is still a little bruised, but the pain is minimal. I can’t complain. My surgery had no complications, and post-surgery recovery has exceeded my expectations. I feel great overall, and the sensations of utter brokenness have faded like a bad dream. I’m still working on stamina. I’m not sure I’m quite ready for a full eight-hour workday five days a week just yet. Or perhaps, I’m just thoroughly enjoying the time off.

I feel compelled to give a special shout-out to a special nurse who worked tirelessly to keep me hardy and hale. I am thankful to God, who gave me the most beautiful and virtuous wife a schmuck like me can hope for. She is a nurse by trade and has cared for me for over thirty-five years. She has walked every step with me through this bypass odyssey. She has encouraged me when I battled anxiety and picked me up when I couldn’t get out of bed on my own. She gets up every morning to help scrub me down so I don’t get an infection. She’s helped me with my wardrobe and the laundry. She makes sure I take my meds, she cooks, cleans, and runs errands without complaint. She drives me to my appointments and makes sure my favorite snacks are close at hand. She never left my side for my entire hospital stay. My experience would be entirely different if she had not been there to meet my every need. I’m not sure I would have bothered to go under the knife at all without her steadfast encouragement. She has blessed me beyond measure, and I love her with all my heart. Thank you for being the best wife, mother, and partner I could ever ask for. I’d be remiss not to hand out some well-deserved praise to all my nurses at the Oklahoma Heart Hospital. They were across the board, spectacular. But a special shoutout goes to the ICU nurses for the two nights I spent there. I swear they were angels from heaven sent to minister at my bedside. I don’t have the superlatives to do justice to the comprehensive care I received. I would never wish to go through an experience like triple bypass surgery again, but if I did, I would feel confident in the quality of care I’d receive while there. God has been kind and merciful to an old sinner like me, and I can’t quite grasp His unconditional love for me. To Him be all the praise and glory for the new life that has been granted to me in the new birth, and now, through a successful heart surgery, I’m looking forward to spending many more years with my wife and family. These years are a gift, and I will not take them for granted.