Welcome to the Zipper Club Surviving Heart Surgery and Beyond

Your health is important. Each one of us has various types of challenges, whether it’s losing or gaining weight or being genetically predisposed to various diseases or illnesses that tend to control our lives. In this humorous yet candid work, Welcome to the Zipper Club: Surviving Heart Surgery and Beyond, author Bruce Ballister gives us a blow-by-blow account of his journey in surviving heart surgery. He recommends that if you are in the position to become a part of “the zipper club,” not to look at bypass or quadruple bypass surgery on YouTube for how the process goes because it can become unsettling. If YouTube does become your resource, he states that one must remember each medical facility is different, and besides, you want to be amongst the 98% that survives – looking at these YouTube images may not be so smart. Bruce not only gives definitions to many medical terms but ‘a word of caution’ is to hold on to your seat because the ride will be bumpy. But you will learn a lot about heart surgery.

I enjoyed Welcome to the Zipper Club due to the blow-by-blow account of how Bruce was not only able to survive heart surgery, given the pros and cons of the process, but kept his wits about him through it all. Humor and laughter are good for the soul and help to heal and I’m sure that this contributed to his survival. The important thing that the author points out is that the whole process is contingent upon your pre-existing condition and the type of care that you receive at the hospital. I found it fascinating to learn that there are 800,000 survivors that join “the Zipper Club” every year. Did you know that? This book is highly recommended and a must-have for any library.

Reviewed by Vernita Naylor for Readers’ Favorite