Sir Leatherbear, thank you so much for calling while I was in the hospital (though I was so drugged up; I barely remember it… my apologies, Sir).
I am doing FANTASTIC. Its only been 8 days since the surgery and I'm walking around like a new man (with a near constant hard on!)
The full story is they found a birth defect in my heart which should have killed me long, long, ago (around age 5 is the norm). The birth defect is called an Anomalous Coronary Artery (ACA), which comes off the wrong side of my Aorta, is pinched, and very small (The left coronary artery supplies the blood for the left side of the heart). Rather than remove and repair the birth defect, they did a double bypass to supply a fresh supply of blood to the left.
Because of my age, and excellent health (no plaque in my heart, 100% healthy in all other aspects), they did a brand new procedure on me.
Rather than cutting down my sternum and spreading my ribs to gain access to my heart. They did a robotic procedure where a machine did the the majority of the surgery through two small incisions (a small incision about 3 inches above my left nipple, and another about 3 inches below). In the near future, this is how bypasses will be performed, leaving the patient in a near out-patient surgery status almost immediately. Since I was a guinea pig, there was a small problem which required the assistance of the surgeon, which resulted in a 5 inch cut under my left pec so that he could make a correction to a repair done by the robotic assist.
I started healing quickly, and would have been out of the hospital in a day or so; however, I had a complication when the nurse removed the chest tube (cutting one too many sutures, and collapsing my lung). This resulted in two additional cuts for a new chest tube, and an additional day to heal.
It has been 8 days since the surgery, and I feel great. I'm up moving around, driving, eating out at restaurants, etc. REMARKABLE for someone having just had a double-bypass. Isn't technology amazing??? Attached are some of the pics!