Seriously??

Total Circulatory Arrest, or Profound Hypothermia....Two phrases I really didn't want to hear about. In order to perform surgery on the aorta, the heart needs to be stopped and I will need to be on a heart lung machine. This makes sense of course, but I just read that at a certain point when the aorta is opened, the flow of blood also needs to be stopped. In order to safely stop the flow of blood temporarily, the body temperature must be very cold. This is called total circulatory arrest and can safely be done for 40 minutes. I wish I didn't know this. Fricken internet and its wealth of information.

When we met with the surgeon, he did mention "cooling your body down." I didn't ask him to explain further. We did however ask the surgeon if there were questions we should be asking that we weren't asking. He said "risks." We sort of just nervously shrugged off any discussion of risks. I KNOW there are a ton of risks involved in this type of surgery. Heck, I signed the form that said I understand there is a 1 in 100 chance of death during surgery. No, I don't really want to know any thing else. The surgery must be done. No question.