Surgery

In near future it will be standard to repair heart going through artery in groin. Cleveland Clinic does it now but only select patients - ie rich or would not survive open chest.

I think the worst part of it now is I am scared I will injure chest. My work is physical and I have pretty much said I'm not moving heavy stuff. I feel chest tighten and I back off. I'd probably be fine but I do not want to go through that pain again. Luckily there are a lot of 20 and 30 somethings at work and my boss gets them to do heavy moving.

For the first 2 weeks a sneeze coming on would induce panic. You can only hold a sneeze back so much and it was brutal. Coughing hurt but can control it some. It was the most painful thing I went through but they kept me pretty doped up first 4 days which helped.

Thanks for the words Rich and keep getting better!.

Yeah, they talked about going through the groin to place my stents and that thought gave me the willies too. Luckily they were able to go through an artery in my right wrist both times. With that groin artery, they warned that if that were to be the choice of entry, I would have to be immobile for a good 24 hours. If that artery were to blow out, it would be a good chance I would bleed out before anything could be done about it.

So yeah, this heart stuff is some serious business.

And honestly, how someone could thread a needle through my artery network to get to my heart to place those stents seems pretty much like magic to me. And I will take that any day of the week over having my chest opened up like what you went through.

Leave the heavy stuff for the young guys. If they rib you about it, so what? You earned not doing the grunt work any longer and have the "badges" to prove it.