Reflections

I’m not supposed to be here, that’s what the doctor told me during my first check up after bypass surgery. Your heart was in real bad distress and you should not have made it!!

WOW what a smack in the face of reality or is it facing my own mortality

Late in the night on June 6th and into the early morning hours of June 7th  Dr Morris worked hard to place a stent in the artery behind my heart then explained to Sally and me that I need bypass surgery… I yelled NO …. I thought that that surgery was a health sentence but he calmly told us (at 4am) that with the blockages that I had left all in the Window Maker that he’d normally tell the person that ‘we’re going to make you as comfortable as we can’ meaning you’re not leaving this hospital alive!! He smiled and said with all of the confidence in the world  ‘You… I’d say that you’ll be back in the gym lifting heavy shit in 12-16 weeks with a cool scar running down your chest!!!’ 

On June 10th they wheeled me into surgery and gave me a new lease on my life… 

Why was I left here… that was a question I had been asking over and over again.

One day my question was answered… I was having a shit day when Sally called me from work, if you don’t know I’ll tell you that depression is a reality after bypass surgery. When you get put on the bypass machine during surgery your body knows that physiologically you were dead!! That’s right… dead… the heart is stopped and the bypass machine is doing its job while the amazing surgery team does theirs but the bottom line is… heart stopped = death.  

Anyways Sally asked if I had gotten cleaned up and dressed which I replied that I hadn’t just yet… she sternly said “Dr Morris said to get up every morning on time and clean up and not just sit around… he said you can drive now so get your ass up and get out of the house, take yourself to eat something healthy and go for a walk at the park… NOW” and she hung up!!! 

Welp that’s exactly what I did that day!! After I ate I decided to go to Memorial Park near where we lived in Houston but instead of parking near the tennis center where we’d park to walk I found myself in front of the small church so being a tough guy… as I kicked the door open and said ‘Oh you wanna talk…. Good I’ve got some questions for you’ and with that I immediately felt weak and fell to my knees finally stumbling to a pew and for the next couple of hours or I switched between crying and talking.  In the end I left the church and haven’t really had many bad days since. 

I believe in my heart that God spared me that day so that I could guide others in their own journey through heart surgery and be a guide and motivation in their recovery.  Over the past 9 years I have helped many guys about my age with more similarities to me than you'd believe, didn't think there were so many just like me out there!!

I want to use My Journey to tell a story of perseverance and strength AND the Blessings of my Faith in God and his plans for me.  

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my heart attacks and surgery and I’ll be writing about it and my recovery because my recovery is different than most have experienced.