RECOVERING FROM A CRISIS OF THE HEART

On January 13, 2022, I underwent coronary artery bypass surgery. Afterward, I was groggy with three long draining-tubes below my rib cage. My chest hurt since the surgeon had to break bones to get to my heart. I needed to hug a heart-shaped pillow to protect my chest when I moved, coughed, or laughed. On the bright side, the surgeon did not put me on a heart-lung machine. He would have had to stop my heart. Instead, he operated while my heart was beating, which meant recovery would be faster.

This is the second in a series of articles on my heart crisis. The first article, Surviving a Crisis of the Heart, discussed how I prepared for surgery. Both articles cover my four-part resilience strategy for managing the crisis. My first article covered the first three parts: (1) Having a Compelling Future, (2) Accepting the Crisis, and (3) Accessing Inner Resources. This article adds to part (3) by discussing a social panorama technique for accessing resources. Then it covers the last part, (4) Having an Optimistic Explanatory Style.