Best wishes to your Nana, MyMaryJane. I've met tons of people who've had open-heart surgeries. My husband's a cardiologist and he also assists with open-heart surgeries three days a week because they have so many patients requiring operations. (And because he likes the surgery assistant work as much as he likes the regular medical work, too.). If it helps you feel any better, the doctors who do that work know what they're doing, and while it's scary to think about their operating on frail heart disease patients in their 70s and 80s, those patients do amazingly well and live a lot longer because of that surgical intervention. Thoracic surgeons (chest surgeons) not only know what they're doing, they can do those procedures in record time. They pride themselves on speed and efficiency to keep people from having to be on the bypass machines, which pump blood in place of the heart while it's being operated on, for any longer than necessary.

Be nice to her once she's out of her surgery and don't make her laugh! (It'll hurt.) It looks like I have some open heart surgery to look forward to in my future to replace some valves that are in the process of being impaired from an infection I have. I dread it, but the one thing that keeps me feeling less nervous about that is the fact that those doctors who do that work tend to be the best in the business--and that patients, even very sick ones, come through those operations with flying colors seven days a week in hospitals all over the world.