Preparing for a Heart Procedure

I’m driving to Pittsburgh Monday morning to have part of my heart removed. It’s a necessary procedure, one I’ve been anticipating for years, but as it draws closer and closer, it’s hard not to have second thoughts.

The equipment for this particular extraction has been gathering in our spare bedroom: laundry detergent pods, a year’s supply of toothbrushes, towels, sheets, a Bluetooth speaker that glows different colors and a massive box of Ramen noodles from Costco. These are basic heart removal tools of the trade and we—my family and Iwill take them all with us on Monday in order to get this right. But whenever I walk into the room and notice new equipment that’s been added—a basketball jersey, three neckties, a picture frame—my heart hurts. Like, bad. Sometimes my head feels dizzy too and breathing becomes difficult. I am told by the experts that this is normal, but I think the experts might be full of crap.

The part of my heart that is being removed will stay in Pittsburgh for about four years. It will live in a dorm room with a boy from Cincinnati we have never met. In addition to these accommodations, we have purchased a meal plan because the only thing my heart knows how to cook is those Ramen noodles. I have told my heart to have vegetables or fruit at every meal because scurvy is actually a thing and also because I have become a cliché.

There are other things I have been telling my heart, about getting enough sleep and choosing friends carefully and wearing flip flops into the shower and asking professors for opportunities. My heart assures me that it knows this stuff and goes back to playing a soccer game on its phone. These are the lower case things I say, but I also have all-caps messages to share. For example: AVOID ANY ACTIVITY OR SUBSTANCE THAT WILL AFFECT YOUR BRAIN AND ITS PRECIOUS DEVELOPMENT as well as a fun, interactive game I like to call “IF __________ HAPPENS, WHAT IS YOUR PLAN? NO SERIOUSLY, WHAT IS YOUR PLAN IN THAT SITUATION???” My heart assures me that it has a plan and goes back to playing a new baseball game on its phone that is “literally so hard.”

I have been focusing so much on the actual procedure, but it’s the recovery I fear most. My heart and I will find ourselves in a new normal, which is a problem because I am an enormous fan of the old normal. The old normal was my favorite. Instead of sharing the same world that we have for eighteen years, my heart and I will soon live in different orbits, aligning only at sporadic intervals for texts and FaceTime and questions about what clothing items can be washed together, even though we’ve already gone over that. If I stand on the front lawn and wave my arms, my heart will be too far to see. That is a poetically tragic image. I am officially in the poetically tragic phase of this experience.

A friend of mine who has been through two partial heart removals has assured me that everything will be fine. She said she had absolutely dreaded her procedures and recoveries, but found that her anticipation was far worse than the actual experience. She even broke down the math and explained that my heart and I would be reunited nearly half the year when you take into account all the various seasonal breaks. Nearly half the year! I’ll admit that makes me feel better. Plus, my husband points out that we can AND WILL get in our car and go visit my heart anytime we want to. (You know, in addition to those two times we’ve already planned this fall.) My heart seems super pumped about this possibility too, I think.

Wait ‘til it sees me on the lawn outside the dorm waving my arms. It’s going to be awesome!