Karen told me that almost everyone in my family hit the floor in prayer almost as soon as I cried out. She especially mentioned Mary Ann and Vonnell. For that I believe I lived the intervening hours to the Denver operating room. I don’t know who notified Facebook and my church friends, but I do know there were many praying for me for the next several days.

I am so thankful. I am amazed at the number of people who cared. I have a new appreciation for EMT, doctors, Flight team for their decisions to do everything in their power to keep life in me. I’m afraid I had bought into young people not appreciating their elders!

So I arrived in the operating room. The reality regarding all that has to be hear-say mostly from what the doctor told my sisters. The doctor said they did not have time to do tests beforehand so they went in “blind” to make repairs. The operation lasted 14 hours but the doctor said they got finished sooner than he had expected and he was confident that my heart was repaired and would be no more problem.

But the danger of infection was great. And there was need for close watch on me to avoid pneumonia. Apparently there was damage caused to the lungs, somehow causing much water in my body; I don’t know what I’m talking about in all this, but I have a “catalog” of hospital records to show something like that. Dr. Dimitri Kaufman (lung doctor) has written “Pulmonary edema, due to acute aortic dissection.” Dr. Walker, the heart surgeon, did say it was a near impossibility that I made it to the hospital alive and twice that that I got out of the operation alive. His diagnosis was “Type 1 aortic valvular dissection, severe aortic valvular insufficiency, and acute heart failure.”

My next move into reality was hearing someone ask me if I knew where I was. I responded correctly. Then she asked who the president was; again I responded correctly. Then she asked if I knew the season. I tried so hard to be right but I wasn’t; I said, “I think it’s winter.” She said, “No, don’t you remember – summer, Fourth of July is coming up.” I asked the day; she said it was Tuesday. I guess I flunked the test, because they must have sedated me again.