Luck

Having a successful surgery and future comes down to as much luck it seems as the skill of the surgeon. The unpredictable nature of the recovery, and your own body’s reaction to the surgery, means that there are many variables to the outcome. Wishing to figure out how we will do with the surgery, you probably turn to the internet for guidance and personal stories about recovery and what we can expect following surgery. Information is key especially when it comes to making a decision as important as the choice of valve we want inserted into our bodies.

Just as we use the internet for information, many people post on the internet to validate a concern they have with their recovery. It’s human nature when things are not going the way we want or expect, we turn to others who may have gone through similar stories. We are looking for someone to say “yes I had those exact symptoms and it all worked out for me”. This leads to those of us looking for information about how we will fare after surgery to hear almost entirely bad results and complications from surgery. The cycle of fear and worry continues and in our minds the perception becomes reality that the outcome of our surgery will more than likely be a rough road. Those with complications post for answers, and those without complications seem to move on with their lives and put distance between themselves and their surgery. Only when the valve starts to fail again do they return to posting about their experience. This leads to the view that most are either having symptoms prior to surgery, symptoms following surgery or their surgery has eventually failed.

While I don’t believe the road to be a smooth one, I do think that those in the majority of the thousand of heart valve surgeries done every year end up with a normal, have a “not really worthy of posting on the internet” type of recovery. They then go on with their lives and put their heart condition away for a little while. They go on to do many great things and many more unremarkable things but the surgery has allowed them to live. Their surgeon had the skills necessary to change our lives.

I hope that my surgery is completely unremarkable. I hope that my surgeon forgets who I am and that I am just another successful, standard day at work. As a pilot, most days I don’t really remember as they are fairly routine and not worthy of any trigger in my mind as anything significant. However, there have been days where I can tell you exactly who I was flying with, where we were going and what had occurred. I love flying with someone who says we have flown together but I have no recollection. I know that things went smoothly and it was just another day at the office.

I hope that the same will be true for my surgeon and maybe, just maybe, I will post a reply on an internet forum that there are success stories out there.

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