Again?

It's Wednesday. Two weeks after my open heart surgery and I'm back in the Beth Israel hospital.  Sound familiar?
Last August I returned here a couple of days after discharge for complications from surgery.  The only difference this time is it took a couple of weeks.
I was awakened at 1:40 this morning with a very unsettling, rapid heart rate that forced me to wake Linda and call the cardiac team. They told us to get to the ER here. The diagnosis was/is atrial fibrillation. My rate when I arrived was touching 180 beats per minute (which I believe is similar to a parakeet's hear rate) and is still running in the low one hundreds as I type this.
For those who haven't had the sensation of their heart going into fibrillation, imagine you have two squirrels in your chest fighting over an acorn.  I cannot use the word "pain" but "severe discomfort with a side of fear" seems to describe it.
They tell me that more than half of all heart patients experience Afib after surgery and that they can, and will, control it. But the discouragement right now is quite strong.
Once again I am forced to be calm and find patience somewhere inside of me.
I would ask all who read this, if it's not to much to ask, to say a prayer. Pray for a turn around on the heart rate and a normal rhythm. Please also remember Linda, she remains calm in the midst of this storm, but I know it is taking a toll on her.
Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers.

It's deja vu all over again

Hard to believe, but I find myself, once again, in a hospital bed in the Beth Israel hospital.
This time it's the cardiac unit, but the experience is too similar to ignore.
Once again I endured a five hour surgery.
Once again I am suffering with post operative pain.
Once again I am completely dependent on others like nurses, and family to eat, bathe and simply move about.
Once again there are questions of "why?" and "why me?"

C.S. Lewis once said, "where we find difficulty we may always expect that a discovery awaits us".
All due respect to Clive, but here I must quote the Waco kid and shout, "WHEN!?"
Is there always something to learn? Is every bit of joy and suffering wrapped in a lesson? This question has consumed me for years and still there is no "discovery" for me.
If you had read this far and still are wondering, "Rich what the hell happened"?  Here it is:
Wednesday, April 27th, started as one of the most joyous days of my life. Linda and I found ourselves in Newton Wellesley hospital holding our day old granddaughter, Olivia Natalie Krantz. What a beauty, so perfect with her ten fingers and ten toes and her little baby noises..what could be better than holding this perfect child of my child. This perfect child of God. I'm so thankful for those minutes because only hours later I was checking into Norwood hospital with chest pain. Pain that had been chasing me for months off and on and here it was, unrelenting and now causing me several nights stay at Norwooduntil they could do a Monday morning catheterization.

Usually the blockage is found.
Usually the stent is inserted.
Usually the pain is relieved and I'm home in a few days.

But not this time. I was told that I was beyond stenting and my only course of action was an ambulance ride to Boston and open heart surgery.
By Tuesday afternoon I was tucked in to a beautiful room on the eighth floor of the Beth Israel Deaconess cardiac unit.. And hours later, the pain that had been chasing me, which was supposed to be managed until Monday for surgery, reared it's ugly head through those nitro drugs and pain medicines and dug in and would not let me go.
By 5am Wednesday morning, after a long night of pain, I found myself in the cardiac ICU. I was told, "Rich, your heart is completely ischemic, if you don't have the surgery now, you will have a heart attack."
I called Linda and made arrangements to get her there in time. But things moved far more quickly than the traffic she experienced on the Jamaicaway. I scribbled my consent and the next thing I knew I was looking at the clock in the recovery room some sixteen hours later.
That was four nights ago.
Four nights of kind nurses.
Four nights of pain.
Four nights of weakness.
Four nights of worry.
Four nights of prayers by people I love and people I don't know.

I've now received three units of blood from strangers to bring my blood loss from the surgery back up to near normal numbers.

I'm still tired.
I'm still in pain.
I'm still dependent on others for the simplest things in life.
But, four nights, no discovery yet.
Four early nights of this continuing journey.