They asked me to come to the hospital at 5:00 am for the tests and prep. Surgery is scheduled for 7:30 am. So my wife and I are going to stay at the hotel next to the hospital so we don't have to get up at two in the morning. I remember the foggyness from my exploratory surgery for Hodgkins in 1988. I was out of it for about 2 days.
At least the surgeons won't be rearranging my intestines this time around. When they do exploratory for hodgkins screening, they cut you open just below the sternum to down below the navel and then root around for awhile and then they remove the spleen. I did hurt for a few days after that, but it faded pretty quick until I made the mistake of eating bean soup a couple of weeks later. I would have sworn someone had tied knots in my digestive tract, so I am just hoping that heart surgery doesn't have some unexpected surprises like that. Another worry is to make sure my heart surgeon lines up the new incision with the old so my scars don't end up looking like a map of the country road we live on.
Thanks again for the thoughts everyone.
