Well, well, well,
This is pretty long and if you don't want to read it skip to the pic at the end. Then you still might want to go back and read it anyways!
I have been mostly absent from this board since the May timeframe with a few sporadic comments. A couple members here do know more of the story though private messaging but I thought it now time to tell part of this story and how it has affected me.
Last May I lost my job for a second time. No big deal I was ready to roll with the punches and get back at it. Then on May 24th I suffered a TIA, commonly known as a Mini-Stroke. I was having a routine test at a local hospital trying to determine the cause of my Hypoxia (low oxygen percentage in the blood) when that test caused an air embolism to pass through my heart and to my brain. There was no permanent damage but that triggered the Drs. to search more vigorously for the cause which by then they assumed was some sort of hole in my heart. A heart MRI did not show any hole, so I was sent to a Pediatric Cardiologist of all things. This guy was great. He performed a Trans Cranial Doppler - think of it as an ultrasound of the veins in my brain. His result was that there appeared to be a significantly large PFO and that he could fix it. A PFO is the hole in your heart in the wall that separates the left and right chambers. Everyone has this hole at birth but it is supposed to close up while you are still an infant.
Anyways this Dr. was set to perform this state of the art procedure. He is the only Dr. in the US that has done this, They usually insert a catheter in your femoral artery near the groin and work it up to the heart and through the hole. Then they blow up a sort of umbrella and pull it back. then they place a similar one on the other side of the hole and pull them together to close the hole. Under this new procedure he was actually going to pull the hole closed and stitch it shut. This is a new technique perfected by European doctors. In fact the first time he did this new procedure was the day before my scheduled procedure. He did six of them with European Drs. present. These six went perfectly. Well on my day (9/13/17) it didn't go so well. I had a twilight anesthetic so that I was fully awake and aware but feeling no pain or discomfort. I watched the monitor and could see the catheter probe inside my heart. BUT there was no PFO Hole. Dr. was perplexed so he placed a call to have an MRI expert reviewer take a second look at that MRI that did not show the hole. Well this guy found a congenital defect instead. My Dr. then used the catheter to probe and investigate and he confirmed the defect but could not fix it - he told me it would take Open Heart Surgery.
So everything necessary was set in motion to meet a surgeon, complete lots of pre-op stuff to include a second heart cath to make sure I also did not need by pass surgery. Surgeon said if I needed by pass he would do both at one time - so as to open the chest only once. Fortunately I did not need by pass surgery.
On 9/27/17 I had my open heart surgery I was scared to death of never waking up but kept that to myself as I knew that if My Wife knew I was like this she was going to have a hard time keeping it together. Well I had an Anomalous Pulmonary Defect corrected as well as an Anomalous Venous Return corrected. What these two congenital defects caused was to force much of my blue blood (blood needing to be re-oxygenated in the lungs) back through the body circulation path doing me no good and thus causing the low oxygen content in my blood stream. It is all fixed now and my oxygen level is up where it belongs. My low content has been my norm my whole life (including 13 years in the Marine Corps) and was told with it back to the real norm of 97+% I should probably start to really feel a lot better, and have more energy than I ever have had. This is exciting.
I have a new lease on life, I was given a new lease on life. The defects I have had unknown since birth, could have (and eventually would have) caused a major heart attack or stroke at any moment with no advanced warning. Surgeon said that my survival chances would have been slim. I also have a new perspective on life. The lost job no longer matters; I will never go back to that high stress IT Project Manager position again. I don't need it any more. I am 64 years old and will retire and focus on family. I have 4 grand children who I adore to the ends of the earth and hopefully there will be more. I need to be around to see them grow up. My 31 year old daughter saw me cry like a baby - none of my children have ever seen me cry as it's just the way I am. She was visiting me in the hospital when her husband text messaged me a video of my 2yr and 1yr old grandbabies both saying "hi BaBob, get better we love you" and I just lost it. Everything in my life came crashing down and I was uncontrollable. All I could think of was what If I never got to see them again!
I figure I can also put a big dent in my reading pile of books and maybe I can get back to writing. I have loads of new material now from this experience and in the open heart surgery details.. Things like the heart lung machine, the breathing tube (horror), the wires extruding out of my abdomen and attached to a pacemaker (they are gone now), the drainage tubes (gross as all hell when they pulled them out, a heart lying listless and at 34 degrees while people I barely know made life lengthening changes to it.
I am on the recovery and they tell me I am doing very well. I am home and taking care of almost all of my needs. My wife is trying to baby me too much and I have to humor her. I am up and walking; I am back to about 5,000 steps a day and that ain't bad! I am actually quite amazed that 9 days ago I lie on an operating table only alive by this heart lung machine and then there was this woman, a physicians assistant who got up on a stool as she was short and bent over and reaching into my chest cavity and wiring me shut tight as a drum so that my sternum has the chance to grow back together. She told me all of this and of a sternum very thick and hard to saw in half! She loves her job! I was set up for Home Health Care but that has already been canceled after one visit. They say I don't need them I am recovering so well.
So here I am feeling pretty dam good and glad to be alive!