In April 2014, I went under the knife in one of the most scientifically advanced hospitals in the U.S. I had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Luckily for me, lymphomas are normally among the easiest of all cancers to "cure." Unluckily for me, my cancer had wrapped itself around my heart like the plush stuffing in a Build-A-Bear. This made my heart work much harder than usual because cancer was essentially putting it in the torture rack like Lex Luger.
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Also like the torture rack, the only way to get out of it was a pretty brutal foreign object violation.
Unfortunately, all of the anesthetics the surgeons had on hand were also muscle relaxants, and the heart's a big ol' muscle. If it had relaxed too much, I would have died. So, I needed to have massive, incredibly invasive surgery, but they couldn't risk giving me anything that could make my heart stop. Instead, they would have to cut into me and spread two of my ribs apart while I was completely conscious. You may recognize this as something the Jigsaw Killer would force you to do in order to find a handcuff key.
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