The emotional side of having life threatening heart problems has been really tough, and I seldom hear people talk about it, including my cardiologist. I was told in 1990 that I had an aortic aneurysm but it wasn’t big enough to for the risk of having surgery yet, and that it was causing my afib and vtach events. I was put on a quarterly schedule for CT scans. I was an industrial automation engineer working for Mitsubishi Industrial Automation. It was the early days of computers being used in the industry, and every project that I had figuring how to automate a production line from margarine to missiles. I was so busy that I didn’t pay much attention to my arrhythmias and I absolutely didn’t want to know how big the aneurysm had grown when I went in for the CT scans. I knew that eventually it would be necessary to have open heart surgery to repair it, and I just couldn’t have that on my mind. It became an unavoidable concern when my daughter was born in 95 when I was 40 years old. I was moving up in the company as the computer technology grew. By 2000 I had put having heart surgery in the back of my mind because the aneurysm was growing so slowly. Then came the check up in the fall of 2000 and I was told that it was time and it needed to be done soon. It would be an aortic root surgery that involved putting in an artificial aorta with an artificial valve attached to the bottom of it. That totally took over my thoughts because I was expecting to hear “see you next year” like all the years before. My daughter was only 5 and I wondered if she would even remember me if things went wrong during the surgery. I had just been promoted and my career was moving along great. My cardiologist recommended using my internet skills to find a thoracic surgeon that had actually performed aortic root surgery. I got on the internet and found one here in Dallas, he was a professor at UTSW medical college. I had several surgeries before to fix my service connected problems and everything had always gone well. No complications and always a quick recovery, so I didn’t let myself to think about the “what if’s”. I didn’t put much thought about being put on an antidepressant just two weeks before the surgery and just after a failed ablation attempt. They said that it was because there was a heightened risk of suicides after open heart surgery. That didn’t make sense because why would a survivor want to kill the selves? The surgery actually went well and I only spent one night in the intensive care unit. A physical therapist came to see me that first morning and she just wanted me to sit on the edge of my bed and raise my arms a few times. I told her that things had changed and that I wasn’t feeling so good. She said that was normal so I sat on the edge of my bed and raised my arms. My heart stopped beating and I woke up back in the intensive care unit on a respirator. I was told that I had suffered a sudden cardiac death, SCD. That was the first of many complications. Everything from PE’s to infections that required opening me back up again. After another SCD they wired me up to an external pacemaker until I was well enough to have a defibrillator/pacemaker placed in my chest. I was released after six weeks and a few weeks later Mitsubishi gave me a six month severance pay. The antidepressants that they put me on as a precaution turned my mind upside down. Life as I knew it would never be the same, and I was definitely feeling the side effects of being on an the antidepressant that was only making things worse. Seeing commercial warnings of thoughts of suicide had a whole new meaning for me. After much experimentation and a couple of weeks in the nut house, it was determined that I’m just one of those who can’t take them, probably because I’m left handed! My wife divorced me the following year because I was a nut job. I had a host of arrhythmias that included SVT and I began to get shocked by my defibrillator at the worst time, like during an interview to get a new job. The emotional consequences were devastating. During an interview for a job in a local factory that I had automated, I discovered what EMI can do to a defibrillator. I was shocked when I opened the control cabinet that I designed and nearly fell inside of it. It angered me after reading about the proper procedures for putting someone on an antidepressant because of the thoughts of suicide and that it takes 6 weeks on one to really know it’s effects on a patient. I had no choice but to use the VA as I went through the thee year process of getting social security disability and a re-evaluation of my service connected disabilities. I think it’s hard for heart patients to talk to their loved ones about what’s going on in your mind and your fears of what the future holds. You don’t want them to be burdened or worried about your health. One of my daughter’s school teachers wanted me to see a paper that she wrote. It was about hearing the often radical ticking of my heart valve and wondered if I was going to be shocked again in front of her, and if I was running out of heartbeats. It crushed me, she was only ten years old. I made sure that she got some counseling but It seemed like every time I would make progress and get to feeling confident about getting through it, one of my arrhythmias would trigger another shock or just wear me out. I read another one of her papers written in high school and it revealed that while it still made her nervous, she had learned about excepting the unknown and to make everyday count. It’s been nearly 20 years now and I have made it to the important life events of my daughter like graduations including college. But I always felt like I was a distraction and a party pooper. The click click click of my artificial valve was a constant reminder to everyone that I was different. I used to tape a Kotex over my heart so that people couldn’t hear it if they got close. I don’t take for granted that I will see tomorrow, much less the joy of meeting any grand children. Being 65 with such pre-existing conditions during this pandemic has definitely heightened my anxiety. I have worked so hard to stay alive and now all it’s going to take is being exposed to some idiot that thinks that wearing a mask is a sign of weakness. Things have just recently made it very important that I keep doing my best, my little sister’s breast cancer has returned. I’m very thankful that technology allows me to stay connected to her. Talk about putting your troubles in perspective!