The Surgery

1 year ago Dina underwent her heart surgery to replace her mitral valve. The valve was damaged due to radiation as a child and it had gotten worse over the past few years. We knew it needed to be replaced at some point; we just didn’t expect it that soon. Hard to believe that was already a year ago. Leaving her at the hospital the night before and leaving her side that morning were the hardest things I had done in my life to that point. Everything went well with the surgery and once she was recovered it was supposed to help make a big difference with her breathing. Unfortunately we never really found out if that was the case. 6 weeks or so after the surgery she was back in the hospital to address a relatively minor side effect of the surgery (fluid accumulation). She never came home and 4 months later she was gone. While the surgery and any side effects were not what took her life in the end, it started the ball rolling on everything else that happened. Hard to believe that a year later this is where I’m at.