{"id":24114,"date":"2025-03-17T14:00:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T15:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=24114"},"modified":"2025-03-17T15:25:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T15:25:17","slug":"how-i-survived-heart-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=24114","title":{"rendered":"How I Survived Heart Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A writer explores how a Jewish ritual changed her relationship with mortality.<\/p>\n

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I had a hole in my chest.<\/p>\n

Three weeks had passed since my open-heart surgery. My body was rejecting some of my stitches, spitting them out like rotten food.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt should heal on its own,\u201d the doctor said as she used tweezers to pack the wound with gauze.<\/p>\n

She was perched just below my neck with her headlight on full blast. I wanted to turn away, but I needed to know: How deep did this hole actually go?<\/p>\n

A few weeks earlier, I\u2019d checked into this same building to undergo the surgery I had studiously avoided. There was no definitive sign or test to say \u201cit was time,\u201d but the worsening symptoms made my ailing heart impossible to ignore. A dash to catch a train sent me into a full asthma attack, climbing stairs had become a breathless activity. It was time to accept reality: This wasn\u2019t the version of my heart that could carry me into old age.<\/p>\n

At 43, there would be no \u201cgood time\u201d to take 12 weeks off. There was a demanding small business and my aging parents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI just didn\u2019t have the room in my schedule,\u201d I told a friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen to yourself,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is not a conference. This is an organ.\u201d<\/p>\n

I worried about my husband. How would he manage? What about our kids? Would they be traumatized watching me go through this? And there was always the risk of complications and the fact that I might not be better off afterward. Still, like the good girl that I am, I picked a surgery date.<\/p>\n

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A writer explores how a Jewish ritual changed her relationship with mortality.I had a hole in my chest.Three weeks had passed since my open-heart surgery. My body was rejecting some of my stitches, spitting them out like rotten food.\u201cIt should heal on its own,\u201d the doctor said as she used tweezers to pack the wound with gauze.She was perched just below my neck with her headlight on full blast. I wanted to turn away, but I needed to know: How deep did this hole actually go?A few weeks earlier, I\u2019d checked into this same building to undergo the surgery I had studiously avoided. There was no definitive sign or test to say \u201cit was time,\u201d but the worsening symptoms made my ailing heart impossible to ignore. A dash to catch a train sent me into a full asthma attack, climbing stairs had become a breathless activity. It was time to accept reality: This wasn\u2019t the version of my heart that could carry me into old age.At 43, there would be no \u201cgood time\u201d to take 12 weeks off. There was a demanding small business and my aging parents.\u201cI just didn\u2019t have the room in my schedule,\u201d I told a friend.\u201cListen to yourself,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is not a conference. This is an organ.\u201dI worried about my husband. How would he manage? What about our kids? Would they be traumatized watching me go through this? And there was always the risk of complications and the fact that I might not be better off afterward. Still, like the good girl that I am, I picked a surgery date.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24116,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24117,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24114\/revisions\/24117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}