What I'm Actually Thankful For (After My Body Failed Three Times This Year)

I stepped out of the shower in March and my chest split open.

Not metaphorically. The incision from my cardiac device procedure—the routine battery swap I’d had done back in November—simply opened up. Blood and fluid poured out of my upper left chest. It took three bath towels to clean it up.

My wife was on her way to Chicago. She’s a nurse, which meant she was the exact person I needed in that moment, and she wasn’t there. She was dealing with her parents’ estate—both had died late in 2024, and as executor, she was drowning in paperwork and grief while I was hemorrhaging infection onto our bathroom floor.

My daughter took me to the ER.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. The device swap in November was routine. I’d had an implanted cardiac defibrillator for fifteen years—a device that shocks your heart back into rhythm when it decides to go rogue. Every seven years or so, you swap it out for a fresh battery. I’d done it before in Boulder without incident. But after my open heart surgery in February 2023, Mayo Clinic Florida suggested I come back to them for extra caution. First swap post-open-heart. They wanted to be careful.

It was supposed to be outpatient. In and out.

Instead, here I was in the ER in March with my chest open and infectious disease specialists running tests.

The diagnosis: infected. The device had to come out. Immediately.

Here’s what they don’t tell you: when your leads are fifteen years old, removing them becomes high-risk. They’ve grown into your heart tissue. One wrong move and you’re coding on the table. They transferred me by ambulance to the main research university hospital in Denver and put me straight into the OR.

They removed the device and all the leads.

We thought that was the end of it. Infection happens. Rare, but it happens. Install a new device, be more careful, move on.

In early June, they installed a new device in Denver.

In late July, I was on a business trip to Silicon Valley when puss started pouring out of my chest again.

I was rushed to Stanford’s ER. They removed the second device.

That’s when Dr. West started digging. Because this wasn’t an infection. Infections don’t happen twice, not like this, not with different surgical teams in different states taking every precaution.

He did the research. He found one paper—one—describing a patient with the exact same presentation. Turns out, in the last six years, it became “standard of care” to wrap implanted cardiac devices in special pouches to reduce infection risk. But in extremely rare cases—we’re talking statistical anomalies—some patients are allergic to the chemicals used in the pouches.

When that happens, the patient presents exactly like they have an infection. But it’s not an infection. It’s your body rejecting something that’s supposed to save your life.

Dr. West ordered tests with industrial allergists. We tested for stainless steel (the leads), titanium (the device), every material that goes into your chest. Eliminated everything we could eliminate. We’re ninety-five percent certain it’s the pouch.

Last Wednesday, they installed the third device. No pouch this time.

I’m dictating this article because my right arm and shoulder are still out of commission from the surgery. Typing is excruciating. So I’m speaking these words into a microphone, hoping they capture even a fraction of what this year has actually been.

Five cardiac surgeries. Six hospitalizations. All in twelve months.

And here we are at Thanksgiving.

The Ritual We Perform

Thanksgiving in America has this ritual: you sit around a table with family and friends and name what you’re grateful for. It’s supposed to be sincere, but it often becomes performative. The expected list. Health, family, career, the usual comfortable categories.

But when you’ve had three devices implanted in your chest in twelve months, when you’ve been wheeled into surgery wondering if this is the time the anesthesia doesn’t wear off properly, when you’ve watched your wife juggle her parents’ deaths and your near-death simultaneously—the performative list doesn’t cut it anymore.

So here’s what’s actually on my list this year:

My faith. Not the abstract Sunday-school version, but the thing that kept running through my head as they wheeled me back for surgery number three last Wednesday: God has a plan. I may not know the plan, but He does, and I trust His plan. When you’re going under for the sixth time in one year, trust is the only currency that matters.

My wife. Who looks at me like I’m insane when I bring up writing another book. Who’s still dealing with her parents’ estate while managing my cardiac drama while somehow keeping our household from collapsing. Given how much time my first book took, she shudders at the idea. To say she’s frustrated would be an understatement. But she’s still here. Still showing up. Still making sure I don’t kill myself trying to squeeze a lifetime of work into whatever time is left.

My three kids, their spouses, my five grandkids.

The Legacy That Actually Matters

Take Liam, for instance. He’s twelve. Homeschooled, runs his own business designing and building 3D models, creates holiday decorations on his 3D printer and Glowforge laser cutter. And somewhere along the way, he got deep into my YouTube channel and podcast.

Last month, he listened to my episode “5 Questions to Spot Breakthrough Innovations Before They Happen.” The framework walks through how to identify game-changing ideas before anyone else sees them. Question three is: What knowledge would make this possible? Work backward from success.

Liam had an idea. One that would require a major breakthrough. So at our normal Sunday lunch after church, he made sure to sit next to me at the restaurant and drill me on what knowledge would be required for his idea to work.

“It would need batteries,” he said. “Way better batteries than we have now. Like, order-of-magnitude improvement in storage density.”

So we talked through state of the art. The gaps in current technology. The history of battery development. The assumptions everyone makes that might need to be ignored. We went deep—the kind of conversation you don’t typically have with a twelve-year-old over burgers and fries.

That’s when it hit me: This is the legacy that actually matters.

Not the Wikipedia page someone created about me. Not the “Most Innovative Company” awards HP won three years running when I was CTO. Not even the book or the podcast downloads or the companies I’ve built.

I still tell stories about my grandfather. He’d take me down to Uncle Bishop’s farm, deep in the backwoods of Kentucky. That’s where I learned to ride horseback. Where I helped with the tobacco harvest, climbing up to hang the leaves to dry. And if we didn’t do it right—if we rushed or cut corners—out would come my grandfather’s favorite saying:

“If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

My dad used that same line on my brother and me. I mentioned it in the dedication of my book. And I guarantee you, Liam will use it someday with his kids.

That’s the legacy that outlasts everything else. Not what strangers remember about your career, but what the next generation carries forward in how they see the world, approach challenges, refuse to cut corners.

I turned sixty-five last September. Both my parents died at sixty-eight. They never got to see their grandkids get married. My dream—the thing that drives me now more than any professional ambition—is to see all five of my grandkids grow up, find careers, get married. To be there for those moments.

The math isn’t encouraging. The number of years in front of me is far less than the years behind me. And after this year, that ratio feels even more stark.

Why I Keep Showing Up

People keep asking: “Why do you keep doing this? Why push out forty-five-plus podcast episodes a year? Why write weekly Studio Notes articles? Why offer one-on-one sessions with leaders when you can barely type?”

Because the clock is ticking. And the response to these transparent, deeply personal stories has created something I didn’t expect: a sense of urgency. A feeling that I’m compelled to share as many insights, learnings, mistakes as possible while I still can.

You’ve told me the messy stories matter more than the polished ones. That the failures teach more than the successes. That you needed to know you weren’t alone in the struggle.

So I keep pulling back the curtain. The HP innovations that almost destroyed me politically. The Kroger fiasco where I watched executives deliberately sabotage transformation. The confrontation with the Department of Education where I told them their graduates couldn’t think.

And now this: the medical reality that’s been lurking behind the missed episodes this year. The thing I haven’t talked about publicly because it felt too raw, too personal, too much like admitting vulnerability in a way that might make people doubt my ability to lead.

But here’s what I’ve learned from Liam sitting next to me at lunch, drilling me on battery density: vulnerability isn’t weakness. It’s the only way to pass on what actually matters.

CableLabs—the best job and best team I’ve ever worked with—has carried me through this year in ways that prove the culture is real, not performed. We have a practice: when anyone is out for whatever reason, they name a proxy. That proxy has full authority to make any decision. And here’s the critical part: when you come back, you cannot countermand any decisions made while you were out.

That’s trust. Real trust. The kind that requires you to train your people so well that they can step into your role and make sound decisions without you. The kind that only works when your culture is actually built on integrity, not just posters in the conference room.

They’ve proven it this year. They’ve run the organization while I’ve been in and out of hospitals. They’ve made decisions I would have made, and some I wouldn’t have, and all of them have been solid because the foundation was already there.

That’s what I want to pass on to Liam and his generation. Not just frameworks for spotting breakthrough innovations, but the lived reality of what it takes to build cultures that don’t collapse when the leader goes down.

I’m also working on a second book—Thinking Independence: How to Own Your Mind When Everything Wants to Think For You. My wife thinks I’m nuts. Open heart surgery in 2023, five surgeries and six hospitalizations in 2024 and 2025, and I’m talking about writing another book?

But that’s exactly why I have to write it. Because the clock isn’t just ticking. It’s screaming.

The Table

I don’t want to end this at death’s doorstep. That’s not where I am.

My health is good—or as good as it can be when you’re running on your third defibrillator in twelve months. I’m still able to do the job I love at CableLabs. I’m still producing content. The conversations with my grandkids keep me sharper than any executive coaching session ever could.

The messy truth is this: I’m grateful not despite the surgeries and hospitalizations, but because of what they’ve clarified. What matters. What doesn’t. Who matters. What I need to say while I still can.

My grandfather was right: If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

This job—passing on what I’ve learned, showing the real story behind the sanitized versions, investing in the next generation—is worth doing. So I’m doing it right. With whatever time I have left.

Next week, I’m back with Episode 7 on Numerical Thinking in the Thinking 101 series. The curtain stays pulled back. The stories keep coming. The clock keeps ticking.

And I keep showing up at the table—grateful for everyone who’s sitting there with me.

What are you actually grateful for this year—not the performative version, but the truth? Hit reply and tell me. I read every response.