"The Cardiac Kid"

By Jerry Zezima

If there is one thing that will make your heart pound faster than finding out you need cardiac surgery, it’s finding out, mere hours before the operation, that you don’t.

Thus did my supposedly faulty ticker skip several beats when my cardiovascular surgeon called me the day before surgery was scheduled and said, “I have good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?” I wondered anxiously.

“You don’t need surgery,” he answered.

My heart practically leaped from my chest.

“What’s the bad news?” I stammered.

The doctor said, “You went through all this for nothing.”

Well, not exactly nothing, because I still have an aortic aneurysm, but it’s not as bad as first thought, meaning I won’t have to go under the knife — the saw, actually, because that’s what the surgeon would have used to cut me open — and end up with more scarring than the Frankenstein monster.

I could just hear my surgeon scream, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”

That’s how I feel now that I have avoided the dubious honor of being the new poster boy for the board game Operation.

A comprehensive CAT scan, the last of what seemed like a hundred pre-surgical tests, showed that the aneurysm isn’t large enough to be a balloon in the Thanksgiving Day parade.

“It can be controlled with medication,” the surgeon told me. “Do you have any questions?”

“Yes,” I said. “Does this mean all the sympathy I intended to get from family and friends is out the window?”

“Looks like,” the surgeon responded.

“And you won’t give me a doctor’s note saying I am medically cleared to be lazy and useless for the six weeks I was supposed to be recuperating?” I inquired.

“Sorry,” the surgeon said. “You still can’t do any heavy lifting, but if your wife wants you to do household chores, I can’t stop her.”

Just my luck! I thought I had the perfect excuse to sit in front of the TV all day, watching something intellectual, like football or the Three Stooges, while being waited on hand and foot, and now this.

It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

Sure, I would have been sore — a couple of ribs might have been broken during the surgery, prompting me to order spare ribs — and I would have had to shuffle around the neighborhood every day because walking is the best way to bounce back from such an invasive procedure.

I even bought a pedometer to count the thousands of steps I would take. Since I’d be on a special diet featuring such delicacies as cabbage and beans, it would be more like gas mileage.

But I have been heartened, so to speak, not just by all the cardiac puns that are a rich vein of humor and prove that laughter is the best medicine, but by the good wishes of people far and wide who have sent words of encouragement or told me their own stories of successful heart operations.

One woman suggested I get a medical alert bracelet in case I keeled over on a stroll down the street. I told her I was more worried about getting flattened like a flounder by one of the vehicular maniacs who regularly blow through the stop sign in front of my house.

I could see the headline: “Man survives heart surgery only to become roadkill.”

So now you can call me the Cardiac Kid, even though I’m a kid just from the neck up. I have dodged the proverbial bullet and am thankful that so many people have kept me in their hearts.

Yes, I am back to doing household chores sooner than I thought, which will please my wife. But as my doctor would agree, avoiding cardiac surgery has done my heart a world of good.

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima