“Just a guy getting old”

I started writing this blog many years ago when I was just kicking off a concerted effort at mental and physical recovery from open heart surgery, and a good portion of the early posts were on that topic.  Components of the yoga practice, including breath, meditation, yoga nidra, and slowly developing asana were a huge part of that, in addition to therapy and a highly supportive spouse.  None the less, there was a lot of years where I thought it impossible that there would be a day where the depression heightened by the surgery wouldn’t be the focus of every hour of my life.

Then, around six years after surgery, I was in one of the those esoteric “anatomy is philosophy, philosophy is anatomy” workshops that often filled my weekends.  We were discussing prana or nadis or shushumna or something similar, and I asked if this kind of energy flows less efficiently where there are repeated injuries. 

The room filled with lots of knowing nods and concerned looks, and everyone assumed that I was thinking about the mass of knitted bones, scar tissue, and metal in my chest.  I had actually forgotten about it for a bit; I was thinking more of my absurdly and repeatedly injured right foot (multiple breaks, sprains, planar fasciitis, gout, Achilles tendonitis, and other assorted injuries).  That was the day I realized that I may have moved past the surgery.

I still take a mountain of pills every day, have to tweak my diet around medications, have weird bleeding issues, have strange aches around the incision, and have “Blood Test” on my work calendar every 2-4 weeks.  However, it has all just settled into a simple rhythm of my life, not a stressor.  I do have plenty of stress- I eventually moved on to an SSRI (select serotonin reuptake inhibitor) to manage depression and anxiety, one of the top five decisions of my life.  I also learned that mental health is indeed largely genetic and chemical; you can see a clear line in my family of who has inherited what, and what medications we take to stay on the straight and narrow.  (And for those people who say “what’s with all the drugged-up pill poppers?  Get over it!” please throw away your glasses and we’ll see how well you do.)

It’s now eleven years post-surgery, and this year’s “valve-iversary” went by with relatively little fanfare (also, pandemic).  I didn’t even qualify as medically compromised to jump ahead in the vax line.  “You’re not a cardiac patient anymore, just a guy getting old”, a doctor told me after the five year mark, “you should worry more about cholesterol and blood pressure”.

I’m just a guy getting old.  Namaste.