• Heart Valve Journal

    Mood swings

    Today marks four months post-op. Might be a good time to talk about something most of us would rather ignore: cardiac depression. In summer 2001, I had open-heart surgery to remove a tumor the size of a tennis ball from both atriums. After seven weeks, I returned to work. Life was good, except it really wasn’t. At 41, my body overcame the physical challenges of heart surgery. Yet I felt sad, irritable, anxious and overwhelmed. I just wasn’t myself. Perhaps, I reasoned, this lingering dark cloud was from the horrors of 9/11, an unthinkable tragedy occurring the week before my medical leave ended. The world had gone mad, and terrorists…