11/29/2016
Its been a long time since I posted on my coachjay FB page but a ton has happened to me lately and since it is my birthday I thought I would do some posts. first of all I am super glad that I have made it to my 55th birthday! Our family has loved our move to Bozeman for the year and we were really getting in a grove with the active lifestyle that Bozeman brings( riding from the house, kids riding to school, the great establishments, etc, etc) and then I found out that my aortic valve replacement( homograph) had gone bad and needed to be repaired again! So on October 27th I had surgery in Chicago. As I have said many times, open Heart surgery is no piece of cake( many times harder than my 7x Hawaii Ironman finishes put together) and knowing what I was in for made it even harder. The surgery took 6+ hours on the heart/ lunge machine which was longer than my previous 2 surgeries. along with cutting out all of the work done last time( aortic valve) I had to get a unusual aneurysm patched as well. I was in ICU for 4 days, 2 longer than usual, due to breathing problems. I can tell you that feeling like you are suffocating for hours on end really sucks. Anyway, I am alive and recovering slowly and that is the main thing. I think it was meant to be since the day I was released from the hospital the cubs won the world series! I was still in a bad way as I spent an extra week in Chicago but being able to get to the parade/ wriggly field and feel the cities vibe was really cool! Having survived this surgery has made a bunch of things clear to me. Going forward I am going to focus on less stress and more mental and physical health in order to hopefully get this valve to last as long as possible. nobody knows why this valve only lasted a few years but it cannot hurt to keep my life as stress free as possible. I will still keep my current coaching clients and I want to thank you all for your loyalty and patience during this trying time. I am going to spend more time with the family and will be looking for my next challenge personally. I want to thank all of you that have giving me well wishes in the past weeks and especially want to thank, Matt Desrosiers, Carol Desrosiers, Kevin Cox, Patrick Sheehan, Dave Ellet ,Joanne and Mike Harrigan, My Mom and Dad and my Soul mate and wife Sarah Keller for being there in Chicago helping me through this. It really helped having that in person support, it gave me more strength than I had. Life is good and even though I will need to be having to keep my activities more relaxed, I will still be out there enjoying the activities I love as soon as possible. peace Coachjay
