Unfortunately, “kidney stone” had a sequel for me, one even more terrifying, horrifying, and shocking.

Medical tests during the kidney-stone crisis explained some other symptoms that have been gradually worsening for me over the last several years. The diagnosis was aortic valve stenosis, a stiffening of the valve that feeds oxygenated blood to the rest of the body. This is primarily a birth defect associated with aortic valves that do not have the normal three leaves. This was causing not only breathlessness, but permanent heart damage, and led to something far worse than kidney stone removal: heart surgery.

Please learn from my following medical adventure, to avoid my suffering. (While primarily a birth defect, better diet and exercise programs the last thirty years might have delayed this agony.)

I suspect that most people, unless they know someone who has gone through heart surgery, underestimate how much pain, time, and cost it involves. Search for “double bypass surgery” news stories, and you might almost get the impression that it is not really all that bad — a very common procedure that is just a bit worse than a tonsillectomy. This may be one of the few cases where the news media fail to adequately convey the seriousness in pain, time, costs, and risks of what is a surprisingly common procedure (230,000 procedures a year in the U.S. costing about $144,000 each).

Let me start out by explaining that I was actually pretty lucky on this — I was able to have a “keyhole” aortic valve replacement instead of an open chest procedure.

What did they do to me?

1. Heart-lung machine at the right groin artery and vein. (You don’t think they are going to replace a valve while the heart is running, do you?)

2. Cut a keyhole through the muscles of the chest.

3. Spread a couple of ribs apart.

4. Cut open the aorta through the keyhole.

5. Remove the malfunctioning valve.

6. Sew in a new bioprosthetic valve made of Dacron and (in my case) a horse aortic valve. (Yes, I can now boast of at least being valved like a horse.)

7. Sew up the aorta and close up the keyhole between my ribs.

8. Leave two sharp plastic drainage tubes in the chest that you feel every time you cough, breathe, or move for the next few days. They come out two days post-op, and they hurt when they come out, but at least they stop intensely hurting then.

9. Leave two electrical leads in place for a couple of days in case the doctors decide that you need a pacemaker. To quote the nurse: “Most patients say that removing them feels ‘funny.’” No, there was nothing confusing or ambiguous when the nurses removed them two days post-op; they hurt enormously.

The surgery took five hours on a Friday. I have a few thankfully vague memories of the recovery room, of which the worst was that I still had a breathing tube down my throat and I was gagging. (Yes, my anesthesiologist warned me that this would likely happen.) I don’t remember if I was strapped down to prevent me from pulling it out, but I suspect so.

Saturday was one enormous fog of pain, confusion, and despair. I was aware of my surroundings, but the details made no sense to me. My family was with me for most of this time; the nursing staff at St. Alphonsus’ did a spectacular job of trying to alleviate my suffering, but there are holes in your chest, and every time you move, cough, or inhale, it stings incredibly. Even if you stop breathing it hurts, pain the narcotics only dull but do not eliminate. You are coughing up occasional globs of clotted blood, perhaps from being on oxygen, which dries out your airways. You can’t really sleep, except in a narcotic stupor.

Every couple hours around the clock someone comes by to poke the end of your finger for a blood sugar test. Why? I did not know this: major surgery causes your body to release a flood of sugar, even if you do not have diabetes. This requires IV drips and separate injections of two different kinds of insulin to try to balance it out, because all that blood sugar screws up healing of blood vessels.

Sunday was perhaps the worst day. I was coming out from under the anesthetic fog enough to fully appreciate my pain and helplessness. At the same time, the hurt of breathing, moving, and extreme constipation caused me to wonder if I might have been better off dying on the operating table.