Six weeks after intricate surgery to replace an aneurysm at the juncture of my heart and aorta with a polyester graft, I’m almost back to normal. I’m walking a lot, about to start biking again, and I’m well on my way to a complete recovery. But there is still a nagging question: Does my family […]
aortic dissection
My wife Anne and I arrived at Johns Hopkins’s gleaming new Sheikh Zayed Tower at 5:15 AM on September 8. I knew I would soon be on an operating table with my breastbone split and my ribcage cranked open, exposing my heart and the aortic aneurysm that had brought me here. A heart-lung machine would […]
This is the third post in Affair of the Heart, a series that takes place at the intersection of a highly-experienced science writer and the medical system. by Colin Norman When my aortic aneurysm could no longer be ignored, and my cardiologist recommended a consultation with a specialist, I finally began to act like a science journalist. […]
This is the second post in Affair of the Heart, a series that takes place at the intersection of a highly-experienced science writer and the medical system. A few months after my brother almost died from an aortic dissection, when his aorta began to break down right where it emerges from the heart, I was […]
Affair of the Heart: I. A Brush with Death This is the last post in the series, Off Our Meds, in which LWON examined some scary issues in medicine but didn’t resort to fear mongering because we didn’t have to, medicine being scary enough as it is. This is also the first post in […]