Surgery Memoir

At the relatively young age of 49, I was told I had a rather dangerous situation with my heart that needed fixing sooner than later. I had both an aortic aneurysm and a damaged aortic valve. It was a ticking time bomb in my chest and only a matter of time. My only viable option was to undergo the most invasive and riskiest of procedures – open-heart surgery.

He was told he might never run again. He ran marathons instead. At age 7, Simon Breeds was diagnosed with epilepsy —a condition that would shape his life through absence seizures, terrifying tonic-clonic episodes, and the ever-present risk of SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy). Told by teachers he couldn’t work with children, dismissed by doctors who only prescribed more pills, and pushed to the brink of despair —Simon even walked toward a railway line ready to end it all… until his daughter’s phone call changed everything.

Operated on as an infant, without anesthesia, Wendy P. Williams began life at war with her body. There were tubes everywhere, in and out of every opening, her mother reminded her on every anniversary of her surgery. Autobiography of a Sea Creature takes listeners on Williams’ difficult sensory journey toward healing, as she communes along the way with horseshoe crabs, dolphins, and other marine life that taught her the restorative power of beauty, resilience, and interdependence.