Three years ago today I woke up with a backache and ended up in a hospital catheter lab getting a stent after having a heart attack earlier that morning. Things could have ended up much differently, but I was one of the very lucky ones – and I know that.

I was in the hospital for a few more days while the cardiologists and doctors figured out what was going on and what needed to be done. It was decided I needed to have a bypass, maybe two. They’d know more when they got in there.

Much to my surprise I ended up with three after I came out of surgery.

Being told you need to have open heart surgery will absolutely scare the shit right out of you. I was certainly scared but it was now or later – it WAS going to have to happen if I was scared or not.

One of the scariest things was the waiting. I had to go in five days early to adjust my meds for surgery. A few days before surgery I really started getting anxiety. I asked, but they wouldn’t give me any weed. They were happy to give me some Xanax. That’ll fix your nerves. The day before surgery was the prep and I ended up with a pre-pubescent-looking chest. Things were getting real.

The day of surgery they wheeled me into the pre-op room to get me hooked up and started on an IV and anesthesia. They got that going and…nerves? What nerves? I was ready so let’s do this. They wheeled me into surgery, still conscious but I didn’t care about much as they transferred me onto the surgery table.

Until the lights went out in the operating room.

I was sure as hell concerned about that even in my nearly-drooling stupor. They were just getting ready to put me out the rest of the way when that happened. The only lights in the room were the monitors from all the equipment. Now THAT will REALLY scare the shit out of you.

The mission was now scrubbed and I was rescheduled for the next morning. One more day of waiting? Hey bartender…another Xanax, please, and keep ‘em coming. I got a visit from the head of the hospital to apologize in person about what had happened with the lights and was offered a job by her to straighten out the problems.

Now, three years later, I have taken the things I have learned about – my body, habits and lifestyle, and my diet (which I was already changing for the better over the previous several years) – and it has become the way of my life.

In my years growing up in the Midwest good, healthy food was never at the forefront of an everyday diet. It was during that time fast food started taking off in popularity, “TV dinners” were still relatively new (and in foil pans for the oven), and the predominant diet was red meat, potatoes, breads, butter, salt…all the garbage I never really liked much.

I think about all of this almost daily, but it’s really heavy on my mind every Valentine’s Day. Pretty ironic it happened on that day. It’s just one of the many things in your life you just cannot help thinking about often after such a traumatic, life-altering experience. There are the daily reminders – the daily meds I now have to take, the scars from the tubes and wires poking through my skin, the “zipper” where they cracked my chest open, scars on my leg from the donor arteries, and the left half of my chest is permanently numb.

I know how fortunate I am to be alive and I will never take that for granted.