Post No. 1

This is a running account that I should have started eight or nine years ago. Never too late, for the big procrastinator. It is the story of recovery from heart surgery. Back then I was early in the process, and probably at the peak of optimism and fitness. Now I'm wiser and not so fit, but probably feeling better than even then, when I was still under 60. What has happened in the meantime? What's coming? Let the blog roll. Others will be free to comment.

First, the bare facts. I had quadruple bypass surgery. It happened without warning in December 1996. No heart attack. Over the years since then, I've been in the cardiac unit several more times, and there's a stent in one of my bypass grafts, and that stent had to be cleaned out with a cutting balloon. There's a stent in the big artery in my left thigh, too. I take pills that cost almost $10,000 in 2006.

I'm a big customer of the U.S. health-care system. I know it needs fixing, but meanwhile I'm a pretty vigorous man of 66, a sailor, bike rider, swimmer in the Atlantic, active in politics. People don't look at me and think I'm sick. So at bottom, I'm a believer in bypass surgery and those who deal with me in doctors' offices. I think of the alternative -- no bypass surgery, probably a funeral quite a few years ago. This is much better, but it doesn't hurt to examine the process and think how it might be improved, and sometimes just to chew on it and think.