Surgery is next step

Dr. Joseph Boyer and I chatted Friday about my situation. He was teetering as to whether to order surgery.

Generally he'd have considered waiting but because i am symptomatic -- my pains continue, only more frequently and with more severity -- he said the surgery is justified.

But he warned that there are risks, namely the surgery will hurt -- no way around that. In addition, it may not stop the faux heart attack as I call them. Finally, he pointed out, the surgery would be so close to his previous masterpiece -- my resected sliced and diced stomach-esophagus hybrid -- that it could cause damage there.

Those are all valid concerns I was weighhing over this weekend.

Until this morning.

That was when I had another incident. The pain convinced me that I really need to make a change. It is so unbearable that I decided right then to phone Dr. Boyer on Monday and schedule the surgery.

I figure the pain outweighs the risks. If I am destined to a lifetime of pains as severe as I have had -- in medical parlance a 10 to 11 out of 10 -- I am not sure whether I would forgive myself for not taking the chance.

So I imagine that after arranging things at work and getting an estimate from Dr. Boyer as to how much time I will need, the surgery will be scheduled relatively quickly.

Hopefully that will put an end to more than a year of these horrible heart attack symptoms.