My Experience with Open Heart Surgery

by Ron La Fournie

For most of my life, exercise and heart disease lived in completely separate boxes in my mind. You either had a heart problem or you exercised. It never crossed my mind that one day I might need to learn how to be physically active with heart disease—never mind high blood pressure—let alone that it could even be done safely.

I was born with a slight heart murmur, but it never slowed me down. I exercised regularly, followed structured workout programs, and assumed my heart was just fine. As it turned out, that murmur was caused by a leaky mitral valve. One of the valves in my heart wasn’t closing properly, allowing blood to flow backward after each beat. For years, it caused no real trouble and stayed quietly in the background.

Everything changed in early 2016.

I developed a severe lung infection after having pneumonia multiple times. This one lingered for months. My energy disappeared. I stopped sleeping properly because I co...