What made you look at your parents differently?

I was 10, and Zach, my brother, was 7. My dad would play with us whenever he wasn't busy.

Dad- “Sit down Dylan. You too Zach”.

(sitting down with Mom and Dad)

Me- “Yeah?”

Dad- “"I'm going to have surgery”.

Zach- “Why?”

Mom- “Your Father has a heart defect, where part of his heart (valve) doesn't work properly. Tiny amounts of blood get stuck on the inside of his heart (valve), and cause it to grow. The valve is currently 2x larger than it should be, being 6mm.”

Zach- “Cool”

Dad- “"I'm going to the Stanford Hospital for the surgery. I will probably be there more than a week”.

This made look at my Dad completely differently, now I knew that every time he played football with me, he risked a heart attack. Every time he played on our trampoline with me he, risked his heart exploding. I didn't realize how much he loved me until then. He risked his life to make me happy.

Thanks Dad

EDIT: He is recovering from his surgery now, he had it about a month ago. He is currently just really tired, but feels fine. He had gotten out from the hospital after just six days, but then at a checkup, the doctor found that he had a high white blood cell count, and had to go back. It ended up being nothing, and he came back after another 6 days. I asked him what was replaced, and he said: aortic valve, and aortic arch.

EDIT #2: I saw in the comments that some people were wondering how I'm 11 now. I turned 11 in the time inbetween when I was told and when I wrote this answer. Also, in the comments I saw that someone thought it was my dads heart that was 2x bigger, to clarify, I wrote valve in parenthesis next to heart. My parents said heart, because my brother was 7. Also, I would like to thank everyone for their support of this answer. This is my most upvoted answer by a longshot.

EDIT #3: Thanks to Maurya Jandyala for a few edits

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