Ep. 2 Recovery Goes South

In this episode I talk about the events that took place starting when I woke up from my first aorta valve replacement.

From waking up in the recovery room with multiple IVs, drainage tubes sticking out of my chest, and still being intubated, to being in my room and moving around and getting ready to go home.

Near the end of my planned stay in the hospital I was sitting up in bed and felt a pop in my chest. This set off a chain of events that extended my stay for several weeks and added several months to my recovery.

As the infection grew and the resident insisted I was fine, the nurse came to my mom and suggested a protocol that would bypass the resident and get a second opinion. My mom instantly agreed and soon after, this elite team came into my room and saved my life.

I was nearly in shock and have very little to know recollection of the events that followed. But when I did wake up next, I was in an isolation room surrounded by every doctor I had ever had in that hospital.

The recovery from here was quite extensive and I found myself in the operating room every other day was they swapped out the wound-vac.

With everything going wrong it would be easy to consider myself a victim. However, I believe that life happens for you, not to you and that its not what happens to you that dictates your life, it's how you respond to it and what you tell yourself about it. I am not a victim, I will never be a victim. I am stronger because of what I had to endure.