Captain Tin Man's Journey to See the Wizard

We are officially just over 5 months post open heart surgery. Sorry it's been a bit since my last update. Let me tell you, though, no news is good news! We've just been busy livin' life. Last update I was just getting ready to start back to "light duty" at work. Turns out "the office" was a great experience. I say 'was' because I just finished up my first couple of shifts back on line...full duty. I'm officially back on the truck with my crew! Fortunately, things don't change much and coming back was just like riding a bike (as soon as I remembered all my various passwords and codes and such). I quickly realized that all of the same nursing homes, trailer parks, and regular customers are still going strong. Other refreshing things were that all of the same jokes and predictable firehouse banter are unchanged. I even got to see a little fire first day back. Office duty went well and I really appreciate the experience. I got to take p...

9 weeks ago today we invested in the pricey rebuild kit for my faulty heart valve. So far it's proving worthy of the extra sacrifice and trip to BelieveLand. I've been told on numerous occasions I really suck at updating this blog. This is very true and I've caved to the guilt, so here goes. It's so appreciated some have actually taken the time to follow along. As we've mentioned before, the outpouring of support has been humbling and is so very appreciated. As anticipated, recovery has been full of ups and downs. Overall, I feel so fortunate and couldn't expect to be in a better place than I am now. I've been reminded on numerous occasions to be patient with recovery, and my favorite, "listen to your body". I'm not exactly overflowing with patience and sometimes feel that if we always listened to our bodies we'd all be overweight addicted to prescription pain meds and wearing holes in our couch, or Rascal Scooter seat (think WALL-...

We're home and home never felt so good! Cleveland (the City and the Clinic) exceeded our expectations, but healing is better done with your own bed in the mix and not having to work around the hotel housekeeping schedule. Thanks to everyone for the amazing support we've received. We're overwhelmed by the awesomeness of those around us. Many have asked how the healing is going and what we're up to now, so hopefully this post will provide an update. I was really enjoying Amber's posts and wishfully thinking maybe she would just continue, but apparently it's my turn. I certainly have enough time in a chair to make myself useful.  I know I'm not nearly as funny as her, plus my heart was just stopped and put on ice less than two weeks ago, so no guarantees this will even make any sense. They say you can lose some cognition and affect can change being on that heart/lung bypass machine. They call it " Pump Head ". It's real...and now my new lifel...

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...

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...

            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...