I had my appointment with the cardiologist yesterday and he listened to my heart, too my blood pressure, talked for a bit and said I was healing perfectly. Since I'm such a young guy ("premature onset cardio disease" is the term he used) I am healing just as I should be.

So, I left his office with perscriptions for cholesterol and blood pressure meds (for the rest of my life), a pointer to a dietition, a perscription for some "base line" blood work and a followup appointment in April.

I guess he thinks I'll survive this.

The bills are starting to come in. Today we got the hospital bill -- staying 8 days, angiogram, open heart surgery and various meds and anesthesia supplies. Just this comes to over $60,000. This does not include the emergency room, the one night at the hospital with the emergency room and it doesn't include a single doctor.

I sure hope my insurance comes through.

I've been home from the hospital for 5 days now and it's 10 days since my surgery. Most of the pain is gone except for my leg -- they harvested a vein from my right leg to use on my heart and it seems like they just just it off and let it bleed every where. I have this gigantic bruise from my crotch to my knee that is just now starting to look like it's getting better.

The fact that my sternum was cut open and then wired together is the other source of pain. Coughing hurts and there are ways you can't lie in bed. It also means that I can't drive for 6 weeks after the surgery because an air bag could do disasterous things to a partially healed sternum.

My main complaint these days is fatague and breathlessness. The breathlessness is caused by only having about half my lung capacity back so far. The fatague means that walking out into the kitchen and back to get a drink of water will mean I have to sit down and rest for 10 minutes. Surfing the web starts as an active activity but soon becomes a mindless television experience.

Everyone says it will be better next week and I'm looking forward to that. At the moment, I don't even have the energy to get cabin fever.

This is my second full day back from the hospital. I thought I'd be able to sit in front of my computers and type and type -- not hard work, right? Boy, they tell you'll be fatagued the first week or so and they are right. It uses up too much energy to just sit and smile at people.

I did get the pictures of me in the hospital up. I thought it was a nice touch that my wife took pictures of the clock when my heart was stopped and when it was restarted.

An thank you dearly for all the wonderful comments from you people out there -- you are all truely nice people. Thank you.

Now I think I'll go take a nap -- all this typing wore me out.

I put up some pictures of my time in the hospital now that I’m home and on the mend. More information over on the blog. Thanks for all the great throughts you people have sent.