Five days from being admitted for surgery I am now at home on the long path to recovery from a quadruple heart bypass operation.

The simple fact is there. How amazing is it that I can go for major surgery and be back at home in under a week. While the procedure is quite common, each individual has unique circumstances, needs and care requirements. For the team at the Mazankowski to do this, day in and day out is incredible.

So all I have to say is,

Thank you to the administrators who constantly had to manage patients with the uncertainty of the pandemic each day.

Thank you to the Nursing teams who took care of me, guiding me each step of the way, supporting, encouraging and for the few laughs that we had - mostly at my expense!

Thank you to the surgical team and Dr Jeevan Nagendran, my surgeon, who expertly managed to carve through my chest, fix my heart and put be back together again in five hours so that a few days later I could be discharged without any dressings on my incisions.

This has been the biggest event in my left so far. There were times when I was as close to the death as I’ve ever been. I have suffered pain like never before and my recovery is awkward and slow.

But with all of that I still able to sit here now, sharing my thoughts this way and with another forty years of life ahead of me now.