Intervention on track

I will keep this one short and sweet.

I was approved for the less invasive heart procedure. May 27 is the date.

For some reason, this procedure is not considered “surgery”. It is performed, not by a surgeon, but by a interventional cardiologist. Whatever, they call it, it is surgery to me. It’s just a lot less difficult than a “open heart” procedure.

I have two minor tests before then. A pro forma meeting with a second surgeon at the UW so they satisfy some type of protocol; and the final meeting with the anesthesiologist.

The tentative date for those is Cinco de Mayo. I was hoping to trek up the Pass and ski on that day because it is a fun atmosphere.

Later this month, I go to Boston for a little over a week to visit family and attend Nathalie’s graduation. Then surgery. Then, a summer of thinking of what is important in life, most likely, if I had to predict.

I feel good about the whole thing right now. First, because it is the TAVR and second, everything is now scheduled to happen. There is never a good time for this type of thing in one’s life. But knowing when it will happen is so much better than the purgatory of not knowing what exactly will happen and when it might happen.

Heart in the right place

[I reserve the right to pull this down at any time. I tend to overshare personal details because I am naïve and despite my reputation, fundamentally optimistic. However, if it turns out to be stupid to have this information so public, I will take it down.]

Recently, on Facebook, through inattention and the vagaries of using my phone to answer a quick question, I unwittingly created a bit of a firestorm over my health. I’M SORRRY!

Thanks for the extension of all the good wishes. I really appreciate that. I had confided in some of my homey’s the current situation, which is a I need a new heart valve. Unfortunately, I overshared in the wrong place and that went haywire (gotta look up where that expression comes from).

First the facts, I had surgery to repair my aorta and replace my heart valve 13 years ago. I freely talk about this so at this point, I figure everyone knows. But everyone does not know.

That surgery happened when I was 40. It was very challenging for my family and well, me, too. It was what is called a Bentall procedure and my valve is a Carpentier-Edwards valve.You can read about my account here.

Past Heart Surgery

My current situation came to head in February and my routine echocardiogram revealed that my current valve had moderate to severe insufficiency. That lead my great doctor, Fendley Stewart, to recommend that I have a conversation with my previous surgeon, Ed Verrier.

Dr. Verrier quickly summed up my situation by saying it is disappointing that the valve did not last longer but that this is turning out be average. He recommended me to consider a TAVR and began me the process of getting me in the study.

I am now waiting for word on that. In the meanwhile, I am in the intermediate risk category. I probably could live another 2 years with no intervention. But I will get a new valve with this new procedure, in all likelihood before the summer is over.

I was at the hospital getting tests when I posted a status that said feeling optimistic at UW Medicine. I honestly didn’t think that would stir up as much as it did. It has been an object lesson in how to not use social media. I feel the love but I have been there so often over the years for routine stuff that I didn’t think that would be some kind of trip wire for people’s emotional concern. Thanks for caring and sorry for not thinking that through and saying nothing.

So far, the test results are good news because the new valve might possibly be placed without thoracic surgery. It is called a TAVR, transcatheter aortic replacement valve. I was on cloud nine with possibility.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQDVNPdEC0U

Normally these valves are reserved for people who would not survive thoracic surgery but the reason I might qualify is that I will need to have thoracic surgery at least one more time later in life and fewer is better. In part, it is because I am young.

After my first surgery, I went back to work and met a guy Sam. Turns out we were both have procedures on our aortas by the same doctor in the same week. We became walking buddies because that is something we both needed to do after our procedures.

Recently, I told Sam about my need for more surgery. When he asked me on FB about it, I just blurted out my recent news. I didn’t realize at the time that it was a Post on my FB wall for everyone to see. Somehow, I didn’t take the time to grok that I wasn’t responding directly to Sam. My bad. I take full responsibility for that. Sam is still the man in my book and I’m happy to have input from him about pretty much anything. Even politics.

As I get more news, I will put it here. It is a little bit more private and I’ll try and avoid giving everyone a heart attack. Thanks to one of my buds, I was made aware of the gravitas of having just half a story out there.

Encore! Encore! Encore Career

I was introduced to a phrase recently that I found interesting, the “encore career.” Lately, that’s how I have been thinking of my own time.

I have found it hard to focus on the idea of building a business because I need to have some surgery. Without going into a lot of detail, I don’t have any idea how long I will be out of commission. I’m hoping it is the minimum time but how much can you aggressively go after something and then say, “Wait. I need like 8 weeks to feel better. I’ll get back to you.”

Right now things are just not at a point where that is feasible. And I don’t really want to do to do that. I find it is rare for me to really know what I want. Perhaps it is early conditioning to realize that you have to participate in a family or not being wealthy, but what you do and what you want seem to frequently be on different paths.

In the encore career, the idea is that you are in a different financial place and you can take the time to pursue something more in line with what you want. But what do you want? Some people know already, I want to travel. I want to train for a marathon. I want to practice the piano more and teach tuba lessons.

I don’t really know what I want. I would love to know what I want. Do you? Am I the outlier? Rather than that, here some ideas of things I would enjoy doing:

teach some tuba or bass.
write some music
play in a quintet
teach some adult swimming lessons
work with small companies to get their business stuff in the cloud (accounting, web site, etc,)
write about my experiences
do some writing projects in technology (i.e. my old job)
develop an app or two
play a little golf
exercise to stay healthy
eat good
hang out with my wife
see my family and friends
write one book – the history of Franco-American
spend a little speaking French, Italian, maybe learn a little Spanish
work in my garden (I used to love doing this and lately it feels less rewarding and more like work – why?)

That’s too much to focus on. That’s no encore. That’s more like a season’s worth of repertoire.

So I don’t know, am I just too scatterbrained? Or is the encore idea just not that well-formed. My goal in starting a business was that it has been something that I wanted to do since my first job in a start-up, Graphx. My personality has not been conducive to thriving a corporate environment. I was good at doing the work but not the politics. And my motivations to do better didn’t fit with the means of promotion in the company.

Over the years, I have worked in number of organizations that kept making the same mistakes. I would like to try to create a place where we avoid those mistakes but maybe that’s just impossible.