Hello Friends,
I thought about my last post.” I’m back” and realized my faithful readers will need some more background before the medical debacle began in March 2020.
Ok.. in 2008, I had a “cardiac episode”… that’s all the doc’s could come up with after 3 days in the hospital… they prescribed propranolol and said to drink plenty of water and get rest!
That lasted until 2013 when I had a real dandy “cardiac episode”.. 5 days in the hospital… they upped the med level to metroprolol … and of course, drink plenty of water and get rest. Also found mitral valve prolapse which was not a life-threatening situation.
Couldn’t sleep on my back for … let’s see… about 5 years… sought med care every 6 months and soldiered on… until 2019. About September, there was water weight gain, inability to sleep more than 3 or 4 hours a night, shortness of breath, and fatigue.. textbook signs of a worsening heart condition. This condition worsened until the echocardiogram in early December 2019.
I was visiting my dear friends Mitch and Cat, when I got the call to report to the thoracic surgeon at Memorial Hospital in December 2019.
Dr. Michael Steinberg.. head of thoracic medicine at Memorial Hospital ( Beacon Health System) in South Bend, Indiana met with me and my Daughter Lisa .. to go over the echo and check off the boxes which lead to open heart surgery. Dr. Steinberg had a very caviler attitude about the entire situation… said ” we do three to four of these a day” and with a mortality rate of less than 5%!!
Sounds just ducky… right? Yeah… 5 % while you’re on the operating table!! I’ll cover the events between just ducky and the two weeks before surgery in the next post.
Stay tuned..
Johnson Long