My eight-year-old grand-daughter Sunna, her elbows on the table and her face resting on her hands, leaned across the table at Earl’s Restaurant and said, in all seriousness, “Papa, you have to be brave. That’s very important”
Those were the words of advice, and I would guess encouragement, from a veteran of open heart surgery.
I wonder if she really means: Papa, if I can go through open heart surgery at age six without whining and complaining, surely a 71-year-old can do the same!!
I certainly hope I can, but it may be a challenge. I’m having open heart surgery Monday morning to replace the aortic valve because of stenosis. The heart surgeon says the valve hole is reduced to about the size of a pinprick…when it should be about the size of a loonie.
After speaking to my cardiologist and the surgeon who will do my operation I thought I should speak to someone who’s been through heart surgery. So I turned to Sunna.
Sunna was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect in August 2016 after her pediatrician heard a sound during her annual check up. Two weeks later her ECG came back abnormal, confirming she had a hole in her heart. Another thing we have in common. I’ve had a hole in my heart since birth. Fortunately, it has never grown in size and numerous tests have confirmed it’s not worth closing because it has no impact on my life.
Two weeks after Sunna’s ECG, doctors confirmed she required open heart surgery, rather than a cardiac catheter procedure because the hole was too large.
She was one of the bravest young people I’ve known when she went through her surgery in November 2016. When we visited her in hospital she looked almost like she was there for a visit and not major surgery. It was like she was a super-woman, immune to pain or the type of worry that a child her age should have been experiencing because, well, how could a six-year-old really understand why she had to have her chest broken and her heart cut open?
But, I asked her over lunch, didn’t it hurt, weren’t you scared?
“Papa, I was asleep,” she replied.
But you were awake when they stuck needles in you to get blood and put in the intravenous cords.
“I didn’t look when they did that,” she said. “The only time I looked it hurt.”
That’s exactly the same way I am. I close my eyes or look away whenever a needle is mentioned.
So there’s my challenge. Be as brave as my young grand-daughter. I must confess she has set an extremely high bar.
She assured me, however, there is good news.
“The best thing,” she explained excitedly, “is you get ice cream for dinner.”
You mean ice cream after dinner?
“No, ice cream FOR dinner.”
Ah, I said, but that’s probably because you’re a child. I bet I won’t get ice cream for dinner.
“If you don’t we’ll bring you ice cream,” she promised.
Look, she said, pulling down the top of her t-shirt to show me her scar, about four inches long.
“Mine is white but yours will probably be red at first,” she informed me.
I sat there for a moment, marvelling at how well she spoke about her traumatic experience, and then asked her about having to cross your arms and hold a pillow tight against your chest whenever you felt like coughing or sneezing.
“They have a pillow for you,” she said.
“But what if they don’t have adult pillows?”
“Don’t worry, Papa,” she said. “I’ll bring you the big pink teddy bear to hug.”
The teddy bear we bought for her when she was recovering.
I could only smile and think about how that would look, this old fart hugging a pink teddy bear.
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