Originally Posted by
bgdoyle
Until I can ride my bike again. 7 weeks out of Aortic valve replacement. Have to give my chest a chance to heal. It's 'killin' me (not riding). I was riding 25 miles a day the last month before surgery. Got 800 miles in the spring / summer. Was hoping to get in 1000, but the doc said it was a best to have the surgery while I was still healthy (just rated at severe aortic valve stenosis, but no symptoms), so we got 'er done. That first month after surgery was pretty rough as the ventilator allowed my lungs to fill with a lot of fluid. So yackin that up was pretty painful. Doing good now, just gotta wait. Hoping for a mild winter!
Happy for you that the surgery appears to have gone well and the physically hard part of recovery is over--hacking with a post-op chest sounds incredibly awful.
So I think the service BF can best do for you is to provide you with suggestions of how to pass the time while you wait to be fully healed. I'll go first:
1) Make up increasingly elaborate stories you can tell strangers about how you got those chest scars.
2) Shopping for a new bike.
3) Starting a thread on BF with a post that takes a completely unreasonable position about how everyone should be using the exact same tires you use at exactly the same pressure, and then arguing with all the irate responses.
4) Giving all your household appliances clever nicknames.
Glad everything was caught in time. Once we reach a certain age, we all know somebody who didn't find out until it was too late. You'll be back chasing them desert critters before you know it.