For the second time in my life, I was wheeled into the operating room of a hospital and placed on the cold metal table as a team of doctors and nurses strapped wires to my body, inserted IVs into my arms – and injected anesthesia into my veins until I fell asleep not knowing if I would wake up. Well, I am thankful to say that for the second time in my life, I woke up – but for the third time in my life – I died.

Besides the fact that I have a half-bald chest, black and blue arms and a shaved groin – I feel like someone who accidentally stumbled onto the field during the last few minutes of an XFL game. But despite the physical pain – I feel great emotionally – because while it may have cost me one more of my nine lives – I think we found the reason for my physically broken heart – and the way to fix it.

The last time I had this operation in September of 1998 – not only did they not finish the operation – but I was almost finished twice. Once when my heart hit 300 beats a minute and once when it hit 240. After a few blasts from the defibrillators – they brought me back, but had to abort the operation. This time, they finished it – and so did I again – but, they discovered that the heart showed no physical malfunction during Atrial Fibrillation – or a rapid, irregular heartbeat, a sign that my heart was not physically damaged. They did, however, unexpectedly discover something else. They discovered that as I was sleeping through the operation, I appeared to stop breathing every third breath. They then noticed that every time I did this, my heart’s sinus rhythm – or normal, regular heartbeat, was interrupted and I would go into Atrial Fibrillation – they also discovered that I snore – loud. They attributed the fact that I stopped breathing every third breath to something called Sleep Apnea, which makes people stop breathing in their sleep. They then realized that one common side effect of sleep apnea is an irregular heartbeat – bingo.

So after the operation, my doctor discussed with me what he discovered and told me that my mouth has extra skin that if lasered away, will stop my snoring, end my sleep apnea – and give me something I have wanted since the first time I had to see a Cardiologist – a normal heart. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad Valentine’s Day after all.

So while I may have lost one more of my nine lives yesterday – I traded it for the ability to have only six lives left – and to live one long happy – and healthy life.