New Plans

Wednesday, July 30th

The surgeon is Dr. Patrick McCarthy. Nominally, he is chief of the division of cardiothoracic surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He trained at Mayo Clinic and Stanford University, then practiced at Cleveland Clinic before being hired away by Northwestern. His list of accolades and awards is impressive. If you want, you can read more about him here. Bottom line: he's among the best in the world at heart surgery, specifically valve repair.

I met with Dr. McCarthy on Wednesday afternoon--barely 24-hours after the aborted stress echo. He explained everything and addressed the three pages of questions I had for him. Throughout, he was confident and reassuring about the probable outcome. He was also clear about the risks of ignoring my condition and said that until surgery, I should lift no more than 20 pounds, avoid exercise and even sex. With all that off the table (!) I must say that my motivation to get fixed up was pretty strong. Of course he has a busy schedule--and a vacation planned for later in August. His assistant, Janice, checked the schedule and they decided they could work me in on Tuesday. August 5th--less than a week away. In the meantime, I needed to have a angiogram, a dental exam, blood work and a chest x-ray. Suddenly things were moving very fast.

Once they presented me with the date they waited for a commitment from me to move forward. I had already decided that I didn't want to go to Hawaii for what had been planned as an active vacation with the possibility of a catastrophic aortic rupture hanging over my head. But I had hoped for another week--even a few more days--to come to grips with the storm I was getting ready to weather. A little more time to process, to adjust to this new reality would be nice.

But it was not to be. In less time than some people spend deciding on breakfast, I was scheduled for open heart surgery on August 5.