Some of you have heard about this through my friends and family; some haven’t and thus have no idea what the title of this blog entry entails. The short, short version? Dad had open-heart surgery on Thursday and seems to be recovering nicely. (I hear that generic orange popsicles are “the best popsicles ever” when they’re the first thing you eat after surgery.)
The longer story about Dad’s heart goes back about six years. First off, he’s a mutant. Seriously. He has a genetic mutation that resulted in his being born with a bicuspid aortic valve (vs. most people’s tricuspid valve). That never kept him from being active and playing sports better than his friends as they got older (probably not a result of his being a mutant, but you never know…).
Back in November ’07, Dad had a heart attack and needed double-bypass surgery, so they replaced his aortic valve at the same time. If I remember right, it was leaking a little bit at the time, but not enough to do anything drastic. Still, since they were already performing open-heart surgery—the blockages were in places where the doctors couldn’t just use a stint—they found a piggy that may or may not have volunteered to have its own aortic valve put into Dad’s chest. Thus, he received a new tricuspid valve that was supposed to last for 15, 20 years.
If you’re taking notes, highlight the term “supposed to”.
A couple weeks ago, Dad came down with a case of pneumonia. He’d spent a lot of time coughing and hacking and trying to catch his breath, but it took a while to finally get him to visit the doctor. Why? Because he’s a badass, that’s why. But as it turns out, his level of badassery made nary a bit of difference.
I can’t count the number of doctors who’ve poked their heads into Dad’s hospital room with a stethoscope, placing it at various points on his chest and back and telling him to take deep breaths. When his regular doctor did so, he heard some interesting sounds. The first was fluid in his right lung, an obvious sign of pneumonia. The second was something about his heart. He wasn’t entirely sure what the problem was, so he sent Dad to get a CAT scan right away.
My understanding is that when he got that CAT scan, he became one of the only (if not the only) patient who’s been admitted into the hospital immediately after his scan. They shipped him via ambulance to another hospital that specializes in cardiac treatment. It’s where he had his first open-heart surgery; it ended up being where he had his second as well.
They kept him for about a week, doing all sorts of scans and tests, injecting fluids and withdrawing blood, poking at him with stethoscopes… they did a lot. When looking at the overall results, they saw that both his aortic valve and mitral valve were leaking. They’d pump blood out, but some would wash back in. The mitral valve wasn’t too bad, but the damage to the aortic valve was officially “severe”.
What’s more, they detected some vegetation near the aortic valve, which could signal a bacterial infection. If that was the case, the bacteria could break away at any point, wash into his blood stream and infect God knows what other parts of his body. Much like the valve itself, they couldn’t just leave it sitting there
Most of the doctors thought he’d need to have his aortic valve replaced (again) within the next few months, a decade less than the 15-20 years we expected from the first replacement valve. One doctor thought the damage looked really old and recommended antibiotics for 40 days to get rid of the vegetation, then they’d take another look. If Dad had been okay for this long with a leaky heart, maybe he wouldn’t need surgery at all.
We opted for the antibiotics route and started bringing him to the local hospital for daily infusions. That lasted three visits. The third morning, he was talking to one of the nurses and explained that he was continuing to feel extremely short of breath and had started coughing up blood that night. She told him to call his doctor, who then called me back and said we weren’t going anywhere. As soon as the infusion was done, we brought Dad to the emergency room. A couple hours of tests and scans later and he was in an ambulance, heading to the cardiac unit at the other hospital.
Mom and I visited him pretty much every day for at least a couple hours (she went without me on Monday). You’d think sitting around and reading, sometimes chatting with him wouldn’t be a big deal. You’d think so, but you’d be wrong. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s the sterile environment, maybe it’s an emotional exhaustion, maybe it’s a bad reaction to all the unhealthy food we’ve been eating as of late. Whatever the reason, visiting him has been really draining, which is why it’s taken a little while to finally sit down and write this.
In his hospital bed, he was having trouble breathing, kept coughing (especially if he tried laying down) with a decent amount of blood a lot of times, he’d need to take a break after walking ten steps… he was retaining a lot of fluid, so his legs were getting poofy… Dad was miserable. In the end, he was honestly looking forward to surgery. Anything to feel less exhausted.
Then it was Thursday morning. Mom and I spent the night in a nearby hotel because we wanted to get to the hospital by about 5:30 (he’d be in pre-op at 6:30 with surgery starting at 7:00). Meanwhile, the weather was a freezing mixture of sleet and snow and we didn’t want to have to drive from home through traffic on icy roads in the morning. We thought about using the swimming pool when we got there, but after getting up to our room at about 8:00pm, that was it. I took a hot shower and crawled into bed. That didn’t do my hair any favors, but I was thinking more about crawling into bed than anything at that point.
We talked to Dad for a while in his room, grabbed his stuff when they brought him to pre-op, talked with him for a while longer, then went to the ICU visitors’ lounge to sit and wait for something to happen. Surgery ultimately started about 9:00 and they figured if everything went well, it’d take about six hours.
When the surgeons came up to the lounge to talk to us, they had huge smiles on their faces. If you’re ever in the hospital during a procedure just waiting and waiting and waiting and then the surgeons come into the room smiling, it’s pretty awesome.
Everything went “remarkably well” with “the best possible outcome”. The surgeon from six years ago had done an excellent job and the exterior of the valve looked fine, but the inside was shot. They went in, pulled out the old valve, put in a new one, then wrapped a ring around the mitral valve to snug it up. That was it.
They didn’t see a bacterial growth. It may have been just a flap of the valve that had come loose, but it may have been affected by the antibiotics as well. Either way, the infectious diseases doctor was looking forward to doing some tests on it.
Mom and I were at the hospital during the entire surgery along with my older brother, Brent. Even though they have a “two visitor” rule in the ICU, they let all three of us visit him after they brought him upstairs from the operating room. He was asleep with a lot of tubes and hoses attached to his body, but he was breathing. What’s more, Brent had been holding his hand while we were there, then kissed him on the forehead when we were leaving. That’s when Dad’s eyes fluttered open. That was spooky.
The nurse came over and had him squeeze her fingers, then wiggle his toes. Everything worked properly, so we talked to him for a couple more minutes. He wasn’t able to do much more than nod his head, in part because of the giant tube stretched down his throat. Still, I kissed him on the forehead and told him I loved him when we left. Because I’m all sentimental and mushy like that.
Little brother Justin visited him in the ICU after work, so he got there a few hours after we left. He sent all of us a text to let us know that Dad was doing well, which is also when we learned about his affinity for orange popsicles.
UPDATE: I’m finishing this in the late, late hours of Friday night, but I’m going to post it on Saturday just so it doesn’t get buried amongst the Friday night rabble. I’m assuming that some of you all will want to know this stuff, so I want to make it easier to find.
Mom and I went to see him in the ICU for about four hours this afternoon. They wanted to keep him there until the surgeon came to visit him. He’s doing well and is in great spirits, which is pretty much his usual state. His legs are less poofy from the excess fluid, his color is better, his voice is becoming more than a quiet rasp and he still really likes orange popsicles.
Justin sent everyone a text at 11:11 to let us know that Dad is out of the ICU and in one of the regular cardiac units. He’ll probably be there for another week so they can keep an eye on him, keep doing tests while he regains his strength, etc. From there, he’ll be coming home and we have to make sure the place is in good condition when he gets back. After all, having him move furniture right now might pop the stitches in his chest open.
And with that, I’m done for the night. It’s late, I’m tired and I need to wake up in the morning, which sucks. Still, there are other things in life that don’t involve taking care of Dad. Not many, but some. No good punchline or summary here, just a general sense of gladness that Dad made it through surgery, he’s doing well and he’ll be back on his feet as soon as he can be. (He hates laying in hospital beds for days at a time.)
Oh, one final note: Mom sends out periodic emails about Dad’s health and Brent wrote something about his impending surgery on Facebook a couple days ago. People have replied to the emails and posted comments on the status message, all of which we’ve printed out for Dad to read when we visit him in the hospital. Morale boosters are awesome, right? So if anyone wants to pass along good wishes, leave a comment here on the blog or on the Facebook link and I’ll make sure he gets the message. Thanks for everything, friends.
