I am getting a new aorta valve this Wednesday. Well, that’s accurate but a little misleading. I already have a replacement aorta valve, but it is starting to wear out. Rather than opening me up and taking the old – replacement – valve out, the doctors are going to leave it in place and insert a new valve into the old one in an operation called a Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (although, as I understand it, they don’t replace the valve as much as insert the new valve inside my trusty old Edwards Lifesciences valve). This is all done from outside my body by fishing the new valve parts up from my groin through one of my arteries or veins and attaching it to the old valve from the other artery (or vein).

I go into the hospital at 5:45 and go through about an hour and a half of prep in the prep room and then another hour of prep in the surgery room, and the procedure itself will take about an hour. I should be awake by noon and leave the hospital Thursday or Friday. My regular cardiologist will be in the room as well as another surgeon – who operated on me when I had a pseudo-aneurism in 2007 – in case something goes wrong and they have to open me up. It should be easy and relatively painless but I am still sort of freaked out about it.

The shortness of the procedure—and, for that matter, even calling it a procedure—camouflages the truth that this is a big deal—for me, at least, and, I hope, for the surgeon—and lots of things can go wrong. Still, going wrong is unusual, and lots more can go right, and I am planning on that.