Coldfire told me to search the Wally archives for some fascinating anecdote about a gerbil (which, sadly, I couldn’t locate), and I stumbled upon a mention of you having a heart surgery. Just so you know, I feel your pain. I’m only 21, and I’ve undergone two open-heart procedures, one when I was six months old, and one when I was six years old, with a third one on the way in a few years (on Aug. 1st I get the cardiac-catherization treatment, just to make sure I don’t need the third one sooner). Despite our differences, I suppose we do have one thing in common: we’re both memebers of the Zipper Club.
Wow, DB, I sure hope everything works out ok for you. Pretty scary stuff.
Here’s the Wally & the gerbil topic for you…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=24442
Enjoy. We all did. 
Well, we got off on the wrong foot, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. Everyone here will tell you that I’m incapable of holding a grudge.
Yep, open heart surgery is not a walk in the park. I had a triple bypass, but it sounds to me like you have a congenital defect. I hope everything turns out okay for you.
Take care.
Best o’ luck, DB.
On the bright side, post-surgery Wally can still take a ribbing.
I can’t really know what it’s like, DB, but I have a 4-yr-old cousin in KY named Ryan who’s only the size of a 2-yr-old because of the heart surgeries he’s been through. (3 so far, one more early next year.) To see him play though, you’d never know. He’s a little rascal who loves to wrestle and run. Every weekend in October we do a haunted forest (my uncle owns a huge chunk of land down there where we do this) We pull in about $6000 a weekend, and half the money goes to the children’s hospital where Ryan had his surgeries done.
The money to the hospital isn’t for the bills, my uncle is just so grateful for how they’ve treated Ryan that he wants other babies born with problems to have a decent chance without parents having to struggle for cash.
Wow, people really do fo through a lot of crap in their lives, don’t they, DB I hope you do well and that there aren’t any more surgeries in your future.
You guys are alright. And you’re all right. Yeah, it’s congenital. Double-Outlet-Right-Ventricle is the name of the condition (or DORV, for those in the know). Even I don’t completely understand it, but what it more or less involves are ventricles pumping blood to the wrong places, leaky valves, muffler problems, and blown sparkplugs.
What you said was interesting, BratMan, because I was born in Kentucky…Fort Campbell to be precise. Luckily, my father’d been in the army for a decade or so before my entrance into this mortal coil, and so they more or less paid the bill. What’s your cousin’s condition? Lemme guess…he had his surgeries done at Vanderbilt?
I’m no stranger to hospitals. Let’s see, besides the two heart surgeries, I’ve broken my arm and had pins, plates and screws implanted, had my tonsils removed in a botched procedure that required a second operation, and jaw reconstruction necessitated by a severe underbite. Like I said, without the Army’s help, I’d most likely have gone to my reward years ago, or, if nothing else, lived the rest of my life with a useless left arm.
It’s not so much the prospect of another surgery that scares me. It’s the reminder that I’m weak and damaged inside, that I need fixing once again. At my age, I’d sort of figured I was done with the anesthesia and nurses and penicillen shots into the ass at 4 in the morning, but with this news, I’ve come to realize over the last few weeks that the specter of my own frailty is here and it’s here to stay.
I hope your cousin does okay, there, Bratman. I hope he doesn’t grow up to be like me, scared and disgusted with himself. I sometimes wonder how much one little boy can take. I wish I could meet him.
You are wise beyond your years DB. Here’s hoping your next procedure is a total success and you can live and enjoy your life to the fullest.
Best wishes to you.