Oh, the doctors were lovely and doing their best to help me be positive. They were taking the whole thing seriously, for sure, but the surgery is well established. The risk of open heart surgery going badly wrong is a couple of a percent. My recovery time was reasonable because I was relatively young and otherwise healthy. Everyone is different, mind. I was helped that the NHS has a good cardiac rehab programme that I was lucky enough to take part in.
Yeah, I heard that those cardiac rehab programs are an awesome thing for people who had open heart surgeries, but they still aren't easy, some people require ages to recover even with a good cardiac rehab program, I'm guessing this is because they are not strong enough, I don't know.