Time to get pumped, vol. 3

Here we go again

Welcome to a Friday edition of Progress Report.

I was halfway through writing Wednesday’s newsletter when I got a call from my cardiologist. That part wasn’t a surprise; I’d underwent an MRI on Tuesday to establish a new physiological baseline nine months after my sixth major open heart surgery, so I was anticipating the call. I wouldn’t say I was looking forward to it, but I was hopeful I’d get the all-clear after a difficult rehab period.

Ironically, when a doctor tries to cushion the blow by opening by saying he has “a bit of disappointing news,” it creates a spike in blood pressure that really isn’t productive in situations like this one: it turns out there’s a leak somewhere in my aortic graft, it’s causing a pseudoaneurysm, and I’ll need a seventh surgery. ASAP.

For those of you who are new here, or weren’t subscribed until after I returned to work in February, I’ve dealt my with heart issues my entire life, largely surrounding my valves, and it’s required repeated intervention. Humans aren’t really built to have their chests cracked open, ribs split apart, and most delicate organs rearranged that many times; it takes a huge toll on the cardiac tissue and body at large, recovery is more difficult with each surgery, and it has you thinking about death way more than you ought to. The only thing worse than paranoia about your health is suspecting the worst and being right, and unfortunately, that’s where I am right now. I’ll be blunt: terrifying.

My fifth surgery took place in February 2024, followed by sixth surgery late last November, two days before Thanksgiving. It took me a long while to recover both physically and mentally from the last one; I actually haven’t even finished cardiac rehab, and now here I go again.

With the world on fire last winter, I restarted the newsletter about a month after my most recent surgery, writing and reporting from my bed, powered by painkillers to numb the aches and the urgency that pushed me through them. It’s this ongoing health problem that first turned me on to progressive politics — my first big issue as a teenager was single-payer healthcare — and once again, I’m lucky to have the health insurance that made it possible for me to undergo the routine MRI that caught this latest issue before it quite literally blew up on me.

Yesterday, as I waited for the CT scan, my appointment was pushed back while the hospital administration waited for authorization from the insurance company; it was inconvenient and annoying, and yet I’m lucky that inconvenience and annoyance were all I had to navigate. The thought that so many people are simply not able to get care at all right now (especially with Medicaid being slashed to the bone) makes me viscerally angry, so as unfortunate as these setbacks are — and man, the experience is months of awful — they also motivate me to do whatever I can to create a system in which everyone has the opportunity to recover from surgery instead of just dropping dead (or declaring bankruptcy).

Right now, the surgery is scheduled for the third week in August and there’s lots to do: prepping for an operation like this is a time-consuming, with paperwork, logistics (it’ll be in Cleveland, I’m in NYC), and trying to stay healthy. Plus, I need to spend as much time as I can with my three-year-old son before I go under the knife, both because I’ll be gone for at least a while and there is always the chance that it doesn’t go as planned (I just don’t want to assume anything, this is inherently risky stuff, though my surgeon is thankfully amazing). So I’m going to continue the newsletter until the week of the surgery, including the interviews and live streams, but the editions are not going to be as frequent for a while.

(That said, I may start documenting the heart surgery experience, if that’s of interest, but that probably won’t involve much political news.)

After the surgery, assuming everything goes well (pray for me), I’ll hope to get back to the political newsletter by late September, but it’s hard to say for sure; a seventh surgery comes with a lot of uncertainty. If you’re a paid subscriber, definitely feel free to pause or cancel your subscription until I’m back full force. This has become a decent chunk of my income, but I know times are tight and always want to deliver on the promise that comes with a paid subscription.

I’ll end the ramble here; thank you as always for reading and the support.