Chapter 1:
The Surgery Journey Begins — But First, Work Calls
For much of 2025, I was part of a small team of AI pioneers, quietly working for months on a project few people knew about. On the evening of December 1st, we submitted a groundbreaking sixty-second video depicting the near future of AI-animated avatar agents. That night, the team delivered the commercial to our partners, including an eighteen-person team from Mastercard. It was the culmination of a six-month sprint for a startup I'm a partner in, called ClickZero. Â
Chapter 2:
Aortic Regurgitation —
Mild Turns to Severe
My cardiologist delivered the news in October, right after an echocardiogram showed my condition had shifted from mild to severe. He referred me immediately to a heart surgeon, Dr. Michael Paulsen, who practiced at Cottage Hospital, just down the street from my house in Santa Barbara.
Chapter 3:
A Third Opinion
Feeling confused, I set up a third consultation — this time on Thanksgiving Eve, with the head of Cardiology at UCLA. He reviewed my results carefully and walked me through exactly how he would approach the surgery. In the end, his recommendation mirrored Dr. Paulsen's almost exactly.
Chapter 4:
Seven and a Half Hours of Open-Heart Surgery
They say time flies when you're under anesthesia.
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The surgery began at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, and ran seven and a half hours — not unusual, I'd later learn, given the number of procedures involved. Dr. Paulsen successfully repaired the growing aneurysm, corrected the aortic regurgitation, completed a triple bypass, and performed the ablation. I came out of surgery stable, with a strong prognosis for full recovery. When I woke up, I was greeted by smiling faces from the medical team and hugs from my wife and children.