Buckle Up, Longest Post to Date

Alright, so I had the surgery last week and I'm only still writing about this because I'm feeling a little bit blessed, and because I find it a little bit interesting. Also, since almost no one actually knows about this blog I feel like I can write whatever I want here, so I'm going to, because medicine is just fascinating to me.
So here's the deal, they took me in to do the surgery, which by the way was an awkward experience in itself, please don't send in the cute med student to take me in and prepare my incision site, the groin, and have him chat with me about art and his mission while he is seeing far too much of me, awkward. Eventually I realized that I was like the 9th person he'd had to prepare just that day so to him it ain't no thing. But I digress, so they went in to do the surgery and found out that instead of a PFO patient I was in fact an ASD patient, which as far as I can gather means that instead of being born with a flap that never sealed off, it means that I had an actual hole in the septum between the two upper chambers of my heart. PFOs are much more common, like found in 1 of every 5 people, while only 1% of babies are born with an ASD, and considering the similarities the confusion is understandable.
So basically what this means is that the right side of my heart had to work harder and could eventually become enlarged and lead to congestive heart failure and stuff like that. It is also related to and causative of strokes.
Anyways, so the surgery is kind of cool to me, cause it is so simple. For dealing with a major organ and everything it is very slick. This is the device they use
they just stuck a tube up my leg and thread it up to my heart and then inflate it around the hole

and fasten it in place sealing it off, then someday it will grow tissue around it so it will kind of just become part of my body, something like this

Kind of cool right? Maybe just to me. I'm just feeling like there have been a lot of random little instances that have brought me to the place where I am in getting this whole thing fixed and sometimes it's kind of fun to look back with hindsight and remember how this has all played out.
Also, since I'm breaking precedence here and including pictures in this post (not that I was avoiding pictures consciously before, because believe you me, I love pictures) here is one of me at the hospital (doesn't it kind of look like I have a mullet?)
recovering with K Dunc


And then a few more from the last couple weeks, meaning the brothers birthdays
I love those people.

I promise next time I will write about something that has nothing to do with my heart or my head and don't ever expect me to write a post of this length again. You're welcome.