June 6 was the date scheduled for my aortic root reconstruction. I was scheduled for Dr. Gaudiani's second slot of the day, reporting in at 6:30 for the Betadiene shower and the whole-body shave. The cheerful orderly who shaved me told us a couple of reeeeelly bad jokes as well as singing *all* of Rod Stewart's "Maggie May." At 8:30 I was rolled into the operating room, where even without my glasses I could see the Rube Goldberg complexity of the heart-lung machine, a wall of stainless and plastic plumbing. The anesthetist set an IV and we were having a pleasant chat when ...I was in a much darker room, with a tube down my throat, looking up at a clock that said 4:30, feeling a strong need to pee and wondering whether or not I was plumbed for urine. (Of course I was, but if there is any tension on the catheter line it makes you feel as if you need to go even tho you don't.) This of course was the ICU, where nurse Nancy stayed with me the rest of her shift, removing the breathing tube and cranking me to a more upright posture, as well as doing lots of things out of sight. My state until the next morning was "punctuated alertness" in which I would be awake, interested, & talking for a few minutes, and then would drowse off for a few minutes. Nurse Dennie who came on at 7:30 told me that this kind of broken cat-napping was typical for the first night. It was Dennie who brought me the wonderful gift of a cup of ice chips and a spoon about 10pm. What happens next is so weird I'd think it was a drug-induced dream, but I have physical evidence. Sometime about 2:30 am, a nurse named either Beverly or Bernadine (something with a B...) came around and taught me how to use a breath-therapy tool that I've dubbed the windsucker -- you inhale on a tube to raise a piston to a certain level. Ten reps, one set per hour, to help your lungs reinflate and avoid pneumonia. Very useful -- but 2:30 am? Oh well, I was awake and bored, why not? An interesting point is that I could suck the piston to a higher level on the scale that night and the next morning, than I have yet attained since! My chest hadn't figured out how badly it had been hurt at that point, I guess. Only today (+6) am I getting back to the same point on the scale! Early next morning I got up from bed, to be weighed. Up 2KG from pre-op weight, due to extra fluids introduced during the op. Later in the morning the official breathing therapist came around and was surprised to find me already set up with a windsucker, and gave me a second tool, looking something like a plastic kazoo, for blowing into. Ten reps and cough, 3 times per hour. All this day and the next (+2) everyone was telling me how great I looked, how I didn't look as if I'd just had an operation, etc. On this day the lead and 2nd surgeons (Drs. Gaudiani and Castro) came by. Vince Gaudiani was tickled; mine was the fastest root replacement he'd ever done, 41 minutes bypass time. He commented that I had "a classic Marfan's [syndrome] root" and the root tissue was "crummy - very soft." Later, the #3 surgeon (whose name I didn't get) also said that my root tissue had been "very floppy - you were fortunate." Fortunate, presumably, to get rid of it before it dissected. Late on this +1 day rooms opened up in the Cardiac Surveillance Unit (1 nurse: 4 patients, as opposed to the ICU's 1:2) and I was offered a choice of a double or a single. Gee, tough choice... That afternoon Marian sent an email to a list of family and neighbors, including the hospital #, and I got a couple of phone calls as a result. Saturday (+2) a friend came by and talked for an hour; Sunday (+3) I had practically a house party of 6 or 7 visitors in the afternoon, which in fact was fairly tiring and that night I felt somewhat fevered and crummy. Monday (+4) I woke up to realize that the night nurse had not come in to take my vital signs at midnight and at 4am, as had been the custom. Obviously I must be better... And the day nurse said that my discharge had been written, but not signed, pending bloods and a chest xray. It took hours to get the xray scheduled, and more time before the on-duty surgeon got time to take a look at it, but indeed about 1pm came around and allowed that there didn't seem to be any clinical reason to keep me around. So an orderly pushed me downstairs while Marian got the car, and home we came, on the 4th day post-op! That evening we walked around the block. Day +5 we went on on couple of two-block walks. Today, Day +6, we walked about 7 blocks to a local center where we hit the ATM, bought a few things, and sat for half an hour over juice and buns before coming home. The surgical scar remains modestly painful, ranging from 0.5 to 2 on a scale of 10, depending on how long it's been since I took some painkiller, but I have pretty well stopped using the Vicodin and gone to just Ibuprofen. The bruises surrounding the scar only became visible in many shades of yellow on day +4, and are starting to fade again now. I would seem to have had an especially easy and rapid procedure, and the biggest problem in the coming weeks will be keeping a steady level of effort and not getting impatient. Dave Cortesi