I definitely have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. When I mention, “heart break,” I’m not talking about relationships. You know, the kind where some beautiful woman who you’ve fallen madly in love with rips your beatbox out of your chest and let’s you watch her eat it, simply because you’re Italian-Catholic and she decides it’ll never work.
I mean, not that that’s ever happened to me.
No, I’m talking about your heart literally breaking.
Around my 51st birthday, I had decided that I was not going to live the rest of my life out of shape. I’d been athletic my entire life, and in college and later years I was a certified gym rat. I never used PEDs but was still able to reach some rarified air in fitness milestones. I could run forever, lift heavy and dunk a basketball two-handed from a standstill. As my lifting friends and I used to say, “It’s not how MUCH you lift. It’s how much you LOOK like you can lift.” I figured I’d be fit for life.
Fantasy meet reality.
Add the stress of working for the advertising industry and time needed to raise four kids over nearly 30 years and my once-fit, 250 pound college physique had turned into 250 pounds of blah, sort of just…there. When you’re a big guy like me you can put on 10 pounds like slipping on a sweatshirt. Conversely losing 10 or even 20 lbs is reminiscent of the old adage, "…that’s like throwing a deck chair off the Queen Mary.” Hardly makes a dent. So I contacted an old workout buddy from college who himself had somehow turned back time and looked exactly the same as he did in our college gym (we both attended NMU in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula). He evaluated my horrible eating practices and set me on my way with a plan. And it worked. I got myself into pretty good shape and stayed that way for a solid 5 years, working out 4 times a week. I’d get to the gym at 5:30 am and put in the time, cut out alcoholic drinks during the week and didn’t eat after dinner. It’s a formula that works. Even with some backsliding, I’d maintained a pretty good routine.
But I had started to snore more than I had before. Deviated septum from breaking my nose twice and a pesky nasal polyp didn’t help. I knew I had apnea so I went to see a sleep specialist and though I had absolutely no heart symptoms, he noticed some swelling on my ankle and ordered an echocardiogram. He was looking for hypertension and blockages. The test came back and I had neither of those issues. I actually read the report myself in my patient portal one day. I very nearly dismissed it but kept reading and the very last line read, “Aortic root is severely engorged, 5.2 CM".
I’m no surgeon, but even I knew there’s only one thing a man wants to be severely engorged, and the aortic root of your heart ain’t it.
Bottom line is I’d been working out with an aneurysm. Maybe for years. The cardiologist said, “I don’t know why you’re here. Gotta be genetic.” The surgeon said, “At 5.8 your chance of dying on the table is only 1%. If it gets past 6 centimeters, that jumps to 35%.” Wow. He then explained the procedure as “valve-sparing,” meaning if my valve was deemed OK, they would remove the aneurysm and graft a Dacron tube in its place (see illustration). It was open heart surgery and you would’ve thought the doctor was scheduling me for a windshield repair. “So how’s your week look? I can get you in next Wednesday.'“
Pretty sure I’m free.
I’ll spare you the particulars but there was a problem where due to bleeding they had to open me up again 8 hours later to find the problem. Good times.
Crazy thing is as I said, I had absolutely zero symptoms. The sleep doctor wasn’t even looking for an aneurism. My blood pressure was 110/60. My pulse around 58, the same as it is now, months post-surgery.
It’s been a rough year. My beloved mother-in-law passed away, I lost a job that I really loved, but I’ve got so much to be grateful for, namely being alive. I was fortunate that I had been in good shape, didn’t smoke and was otherwise pretty healthy. It’s been a harder road to get back into the gym with the same vigor as before but I get there. I’ve had to dial back the amount of weight and go for higher reps, but I’ve reevaluated my goals in the gym and I’m OK with that. The important thing is not only to keep up on those doctor appointments, but be you’re own advocate. Through some snafu, I never recieved a call from the hospital, ordering physician or anybody for that matter. The sleep doctor couldn’t explain why he never saw the results of my test, and that all my other heart architecture was normal. He said with an almost apologetic tone, “Your BP, heart rate, cholesterol is perfect. I wasn’t checking for an aneurysm. I think you’re just very lucky. Be thankful it was discovered.”
You bet I am.
Paintings for the People