S
Susan BAV
I had my first heart surgery, and resulting twelve inch-long scar, 28 years ago this week. What a shock that was. I knew I had the condition, and was always followed for it medically, and was given many physical restrictions for it. But the urgency of the necessity of the surgery to repair the first part of my condition, the coarctation of the aorta, was sudden. A lot of you have gone through the same or worse.
We lived in the midwest at that time and my dear old dad, who would have been celebrating his 50th anniversary with my mother this month were he still alive, wanted only the best for his only daughter. So he communicated with Houston, as it were, and took me down to Texas for the famous Dr. Denton Cooley to operate. Amazing surgeon!
But I was a skinny little seventeen year old who had just graduated from high school, ready for college registration, and the gargantuan twelve inch-long scar snaking around and across and up my back was a shocker in both appearance and pain. Somehow I managed to sail through it all but I'm sure the moral support of family and friends was a big factor in that. A few months later, a very nice man asked me to marry him; and shortly afterward my family doctor told me that having children wouldn't be safe for me with my heart defect and bicuspid valve. While that was also shocking and disappointing, my dear old dad comforted me again. I married that very nice man, "Mr. W," to whom I have been married for over 27 years now. We had two healthy and happy sons together, both of whom are also happily married now. I realize that the family doctor was well-meaning though.
Regarding ugly scars, and there is a simultaneous thread on site right now about scars and wires, coarctation repair scars can only heal like a lumpy quilt because of how all the muscles are cut. My dad told me that I shouldn't mind my coarctation scar, which I used to complain about; he told me it was a war wound and that I had survived. He died before I had to have the bicuspid replaced nearly four years ago, but he would have found something comforting to say about this ugly scar too. I sure miss him.
And now, twenty inches of ugly heart surgery scars (not including three drain holes) and twenty-eight years later, I'm so glad to be alive!
