For those that are curious, or even a bit worried about me, this is a bit about my upcoming heart surgery.

As you may have read I’m planning to have open-heart surgery soon. This really wasn’t my idea but my Cardiologist (Dr. Platko) feels strongly that it is in my best interest to do it as soon as possible.

The surgery is to repair an Atrial Septal Defect or ASD. See http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=11065 for more information on what exactly that is. In my case it is a 1.6cm hole that is causing the pressure in my right atria to hit 70mmHg, where it is only supposed to peak at about 40mmHg.

To date I have experienced no difficulties with this situation which I’ve had since I was born. If left untreated it will cause congestive heart failure at some time in the future. That would cause fluid to back up into my lungs and all sorts of other problems. So my choice is to go ahead and get it repaired.

To that end I’m now under the care of Dr. Muehrcke for the surgery. Yes, this is being done here in St. Augustine at Flagler Hospital. According to what I’ve found this is one of the best heart programs in the southeast. With that in mind it seems logical to have it done only 5 minutes from home.

In my case, the tests I’ve gone through determined that due to the location of the hole, a catheterization type repair is not possible. It has been looked at with just about every piece of diagnostic equipment in town. This has included a echo cardio graham, a nuclear stress test, a transesophogeal echocardiogram, and most recently a dual sided heart catheterization. Add to that I also was referred out for a gastrointestinal consult to Dr. Ben Pineau, who performed an endoscopy along with colonoscopy. I don’t think there is much of me that hasn’t been looked at and poked.

I should note that in all the testing, other than the ASD it was determined that my heart was healthy with no signs of coronary artery disease. 

One nice thing, none of the testing has been painful at all. A bit time consuming yes, but I’ve resumed normal activity by the next day (if not the same day) in each case.

The prognosis for this surgery is that I will be back to normal (what ever that might be), 6-10 weeks after surgery and should be fully recovered in 6 months.

I'm not worried about the surgery, while I'm not excited about having to do it either.

I was scheduled to have the surgery next week Feb 23, but due to catching the flu and still having congestion from that, Dr. Muehrcke has sent me back to Dr. Linda Clonch (my primary care physician) to be cleared for surgery. During all this time Dr. Vandana Bhide A very good friend of mine has been giving me advice and watching over all the fun I'm having.

With all of this I'm not sure Blue Cross likes me any more, but what can I say I've been paying them for 25 years and this is the first time they have had to pay out anything. Hopefully after this is done it'll be another 10+ years before they need to pay out any on me again.

I hope this answered most of the questions everyone has. If not feel free to ask. For now (at least until the surgery) I feel fine, (not counting the flu) I'm in good spirits,  and I'm fully capable of doing all my normal activities.

2/22/10 Update..

After Visiting with Dr. Clonch, she has put me on antibiotics and wants to see me again next Monday.

3/14/10 Update..

I'm still in one piece, haven't had the surgery yet. I was cleared by Dr. Clonch, but screwed up big time by not setting my alarm clock properly and missed my appointment with Dr. Muehrcke. I was rescheduled for 3/17. Now it looks like that will not work since I've picked up another infection of some sort and expect to be disqualified for surgery again.

4/17/10 Update..

As expected I was pushed back for surgery and the surgical appointment. The Surgical appointment was reset to 4/8. At that time I got my new date to get cut open. Now I'll be heading in to pre-op Thursday afternoon 4/22/10 and then have to come back at 5 AM on 4/26 for the surgery. With my appointment on the 8th and my normal departure time for the NAB & LasVegas would have been the 10th, not knowing how fast Dr. Muehrcke would want to go I just cancelled all plans to go to Vegas this year. Not to mention that all the test and procedures that have been performed ate up all my extra spending money.  I plan to update again on the 27th or 28th from the hospital to let everyone know how things went. I did tell Dr. Muehrcke, if I croak on the table I'm not going to pay my co-payment. He said he'd make sure I was able to write a check after he was done.

5/06/07 Update..

I hope no one was celebrating my departure since I hadn't updated like I had intended. I'm still here and recovering well from the surgery. The surgery itself went well according to Dr. Muehrcke and his PA Will. They said I slept through it, I guess I did I sure don't remember any of it. When I did Wake up I remember seeing Dr. Vee, quickly walk through the open heart recovery unit and shake my hand. But most of the about 24 hours I spent in open heart recovery I spent knocked out. Which was just fine with me.  Somewhere in that first 24 hours I was extubated, that was rather interesting, I don't know if I was being suctioned or what, but I remember the nurse telling me to breath in and I couldn't. Then I could, then the tube was gone and I was fine. It was a bit uncomfortable right in that part but that has been the worst of it.  They had planned to toss me out of the hospital Saturday morning but that was pushed back to Monday due to an unexpected appearance of a bit of SVT quickly followed by A-Flutter & A-fib. The SVT is a whole chapter to itself.

I'm not going to get into it now (Follow up note: Ok I got into it a bit, There are many reading that are medically trained and will understand want I'm saying in here, for the rest don't worry it's just some medical stuff that's working out.) but lets just say once I felt it coming I knew what it was and how to fix it, the only problem was I was in a hospital, I don't get to call the shots in there, and I was quite unhappy laying in there while they were giving me several ACLS drugs that were having no effect  the problem. I knew and told them how to fix, the only problem was that my solution isn't in the ACLS book. On my next visit to the cardiologist we ARE going to have a serious set down to see if he wants to start listing to what I tried to tell him starting over a year ago, or of he wants me to find a new doc. Don't get me wrong Dr. Platko is one of the best cardiologist in this area, but I told him about what this condition caused and how it acted and he hadn't ever seen anything like it before, and well I was the PT, I didn't know what I was talking about. Now if the data is properly analyzed from the rhythm changes in the hospital, it will show beyond all doubt, that I did know what I was talking about. Now all we have to do is to figure out what specific events are causing the SVT. (that was the original event that led to the rediscovery of the ASD and the repair).