Captain Tin Man's Journey to See the Wizard

Cleveland Clinic is legit! I don't have a lot to compare it to, but it is still very evident why it's the number one heart hospital in the nation and the number two overall care hospital in the nation. The campus is huge! I'm so glad that we decided to stay at the hotel connected to the main hospital. It makes it so easy to get to and from all the appointments. It also allows the girls to go to and fro by themselves safely. Yesterday, Eric's day started out pretty early with appointments that continued up until 3:30 in the afternoon. I accompanied Eric to the first couple of appointments, and then he was on the "conveyor belt" of labs and tests. In the meantime, the girls and I set out to the grocery store. We Ubered to the closest Aldi's. Thanks to advice from Tania , (a fellow Poudre alum who lives in Cleveland) we brought our quarters for the carts and our own bags. We were all set, until the Uber driver got to be a nervous Nelly about le...

OK, fair warning that this one might get long and a bit dry, but should be the last of the educational series. Dive in at your own risk. The ten years since finding out my heart is jacked has been both a blessing and great source of anxiety. Knowing it needs to be fixed, but not knowing when, is tough for someone like me. I've never really been "afraid" of surgery, but the limbo is brutal. If it's broke, then lets fix it! I now understand why that wasn't a wise option. I just went ten years without needing invasive intervention. Guess how long most bio-prosthetic heart valves last before you need another surgery? Yep...about ten years if you're lucky in your 30's. Overall, I've come to realize the wait has provided very valuable perspective and allowed me to work through the process and do what I do best...research! I was first referred to a local surgeon by my cardiologist a little over a year ago. The purpose of the consultation was just...

The aortic valve sits inside the aorta. The valve has three cusps that open to let blood out and come together to close the valve off. It's supposed to be a one way valve allowing oxygen rich blood to flow out to the body. It should then close tightly when the heart relaxes and refills. Think of it like a door. It should open wide to let everyone out, but then close tightly preventing anything from coming in. The bicuspid valve only has two cusps, often times the three cusps are present but two are fused together. With bicuspid valves, one of two things can happen (or sometimes both simultaneously). The valve can become narrow and calcified as the disease process advances, or it can become progressively leakier. Mine is very leaky. The blood goes out fine, but then leaks back in to the left ventricle causing the heart to work very hard. This results in the heart chamber getting really big and thick due to the extra work to pump a large volume of blood forward. Eventuall...

Anyone that knows our family, knows that we are a dog family. We currently have two rescues, a golden retriever and a golden retriever mix. The golden mix is a nut and he LOVES Eric. He's a mess when Eric's at work. We're a little concerned about "keeping Eric safe from Louie" when we get home. Luckily Mackenzie has been taking Louie for runs, and that seems to have given Eric some space from Louie. She needs to work on her long board skills, though.... For Louie's sake and for the sake of the neighborhood onlookers. Yesterday, three of the four Linnenburgers, collectively spent 6 hours in dentist and orthodontist chairs. Mostly routine work for the Linnenburger ladies. Eric, having an upcoming open heart surgery, is all squared away in this arena. Miss Maggie had braces put on yesterday. The other Linnenburger offspring turned 15 today. Happy Birthday Mackenzie! Let's go to Cleveland to celebrate. It was a mad dash to the DMV first ...

This morning I pulled my gear off the truck and packed it away in my locker for the last time in a bit. It was kind of surreal. There were tons of well wishes, handshakes, and hugs. I got hugs from dudes I never envisioned I'd be hugging in a whole career.  The shift itself was standard. We started with a gnarly motorcycle crash that dropped 30 minutes before the shift was even supposed to start. I had just started checking out my equipment and setting up my gear on the truck, but I was there so I was going. We finished the 24 hour shift with the dreaded 06:30 AM call just before shift change. This one was the furthest thing from a true emergency. There was a whole lot of uneventful run of the mill in between.  We even got a few hours of sleep on a Saturday night. I think the candle we've been lighting to fend off the evil spirits that create night calls is truly legit and doing it's job well.  Thanks Firefighter Brian White for your dedication to the crew brin...

Eric gave me way too much credit for being able to provide entertainment through my non-existent ability to blog, except for that of my grammar and spelling errors! I'm still trying to teach myself to only give "one space" after ending a sentence with a period, instead of "two". (We kids using word processors in the early 90's were taught this.) Oh, and I love to use "quotes". Eric mocks me for this, but as you'll see, I still self-satisfyingly do it. Anyway, thanks for visiting and I promise the updates post surgery will get right to the point! I was trying to recall that exact moment that Eric told me about his heart.... I really can't. It just became part of our  family life. We were busy with two young kids, balancing two jobs (actually three, since Eric had two at that time), taking care of a house, dogs, etc. It really just became normal. The doctors had "guessed 10 years" before we needed to take action, and that just see...

            To begin, thanks so much for visiting. I promise future posts won't be nearly as long as this one is sure to be. We thought it might be helpful to keep people up to date with some recent developments in our little world. Today's post will hopefully begin to fill anyone interested in with the happs of the situation and what to expect moving forward. Bottom line... My heart is a little broken down and in need of some upgrades. I need to "pimp my ticker". I know, right, it's great news there's actually one in there...even if it is the size of a pea and hard as a rock! Really though, I have a bicuspid aortic valve, which is a very frequent and fixable heart defect. It's actually the most common type of heart defect, present in about 1-2% of the population. It's likely some of you have it, too. Most people live an entire lifetime never knowing they have it, or there is no need to do anything about it. Mine just happens to be causing s...