{"id":1763,"date":"2018-09-15T11:30:32","date_gmt":"2018-09-15T10:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1763"},"modified":"2018-09-16T10:47:59","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T09:47:59","slug":"apparently-im-not-immortal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/thoughts\/that-just-spill-out-of-our-heads\/apparently-im-not-immortal\/","title":{"rendered":"Apparently I’m not Immortal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aortic heart valve replacement and aorta repair on the horizon and I (John) am guessing that open heart surgery is not a bundle of laughs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange thing to realise that things may end sooner than you thought . Thinking about your mortality is of those things you ignore. The days tick by and you just expect they will keep on coming; until the unexpected happens.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has read this blog will know that Liz is a retired doctor. Just before she retired, about 8 years ago, we were watching television one evening when she put her head on my chest. ‘I think you’ve got a heart murmur’ she said.<\/p>\n

Thus started a chain of events which led to me having a CT scan and echocardiogram<\/span>s every 9 to 12 months to keep an ‘eye on things’. Apparently I have bicuspid aortic valve and an aortic aneurysm.<\/p>\n

After 8 years of monitoring things have got to the point that complex open heart surgery is going to be required. I was only told this earlier this week so it’s kind of weird to be faced with the knowledge that you need serious and risky surgery to carry on living.<\/p>\n

\"Heart
A lot of ‘black humour’ is going to be required to get through this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To be honest I’m not looking forward to this and it’s obviously a tad scary. On the other hand I’m fortunate enough to live in a country where this surgery is routinely carried out about 7,500 times a year and is free within our wonderful National Healt Service that slime ball politicians on the right are trying to dismantle.<\/p>\n

I have no choice; but I can write some words about the process that may help someone else in the future. So despite being the world’s worst blogger I will try and keep this updated to the end (not the best choice of words, John).<\/p>\n

The next step is being called for another scan and some further tests so that the surgeons have a clear idea of what they are facing.<\/p>\n

So as I get called for tests and then surgery I’ll give you a patient’s eye view of things.<\/p>\n

Now hopefully, with the skills of those who work in the NHS and the support of Liz, I’ll come through this ok. I’m a crap writer but would urge you to read this post<\/a> by a brave lady who had far fewer years than I have had.<\/p>\n

It’s a cliche but ‘live every day as if it is your last, for one day it will be’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aortic heart valve replacement and aorta repair on the horizon and I (John) am guessing that open heart surgery is not a bundle of laughs. It\u2019s a strange thing to realise that things may end sooner than you thought . Thinking about your mortality is of those things you ignore. The days tick by and … Continue reading “Apparently I’m not Immortal”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[80,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1763"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1763"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1772,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1763\/revisions\/1772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}