So it's been a while and although my last post was a year and a half ago and I haven't been completely idle.

Following my second aortic valve replacement in February of 2021, I continued to get twice-daily antibiotic infusions for a couple of months followed and was eventually found to have no remaining infection in my heart.  I was able to complete my cardiac rehab and more-or-less return to normal life.

In November of 2021, I was able to go to Disney World and Universal Studios theme parks with my entire family.  That was incredible even though I over did things every day.  I was able to recover within a few days which would not have happened before these surgeries.  I loved every minute of hanging with my grandchildren, children and my son-in-law.

After I returned from that trip I had a full follow-up with all my doctors at Mayo Clinic.  A full day of tests followed by another full day of meeting with Cardiologists, Surgeons, Urologists and so forth.  The funny part came when I met with Urology and they more-or-less casually mentioned that my Kidney cancer had not advanced since my last visit.

MY WHAT?

Yup, in all that had happened and gone wrong over the previous couple of years, I had actually forgotten that I had a small tumor on my right kidney that we had been watching.  I had been told that the likelihood of it being life threatening was less than 1% but with my luck, we kept an eye on it. 

But really? How does one not remember that they have kidney cancer?

In May of this year I ended up having a kidney stone which passed enviably without the pain that most people experience.  During a follow-up exam however, they noted that the kidney tumor had grown more than they were comfortable with so I was scheduled for surgery on August 18th.  The plan was to do an ablation which would freeze and destroy the tumor in a minimally invasive procedure using robots and needles and whatnot.  

In anticipation of the procedure I was set up for a number of test including a cardiac stress test.  We go figure, during the test my heart went into ventricular tachycardia and stopped briefly.  This all happened while I was hooked up to all the monitoring stuff and was a getting ultra-sound imaging of my heart.  I was ok and they got me stable in moments but sent me straight to the ER where i had another V-Tach moment or two that went away without intervention.  At any rate, the decision was made to give me an ICD (Internal Cardiac Defibrillator) to shock my heart back into rhythm if it should happen again.  

So on to the cancer surgery a few weeks later.  Everything went well and the biopsy confirmed a stage-1 malignancy.  But that's not how I ever end thing.  A day after I was released from the hospital, i got an infection which made me pretty sick.  After a few days on antibiotics, I was getting worse and the urine cultures now showed that the bacteria was resistant to the antibiotic so, back to Mayo for an infusion of a different antibiotic and now things are starting to get better. 

I laugh sometimes at everything that seemingly goes wrong.  It is getting harder each time to fight to get better but I am doing just that.  I will start another round of cardiac rehab in a few weeks and look forward to doing things that are not mitigated by my health drama.

Don't know if anyone is still connected to this CaringBridge service but I figured I needed to update all the kind folks who sent the love and prayers that sustained me.  Living in a state of grace is awe-inspiring if not challenging some times.

I love you all,

Ross