Patient Story of Ada Maris

My Story

About Me (In My Own Words)

I am 59 years old, married and the mother of two adult children. In 2008, due to my husband's work, we relocated to New York City from Los Angeles.

In December of 2012, to my surprise, I had a minor heart attack due to spontaneous coronary arterial dissection. I say I was surprised because I had absolutely none of the classic risk factors—never smoked or drank, not overweight, exercised regularly, no high blood pressure or cholesterol problem. Anyway, because of that incident I was being monitored annually with echocardiograms etc.

I had had mitral valve prolapse all my life but was asymptomatic. In March of 2016 the echo showed moderate leakage of the mitral valve, and by October the leakage had become severe, indicating surgery to repair the valve. My surgery was scheduled for January 4, 2017.

I went in the day before for catheterization; my arteries were good. The next day I was prepped for surgery, on the operating table, under general anesthesia, intubated...when I went into anaphylactic shock! It's called perioperative anaphylaxis and is super rare. The doctors suspect chlorhexadine, a disinfectant used on the catheter that is placed in the neck. Luckily the anesthesiology team was quick to pick up on the situation. The surgery was halted, and I woke up to the news that I had not had the procedure. Spent a another day in the hospital and was sent home.

It was kind of a big deal at the hospital—triggered an inventory of the products used, and the incident was reported to the FDA.

I thought it would be a snap to recover from that experience, but the truth is it took a couple of weeks to feel like myself again...and then get geared up for another go!

My surgery was rescheduled for February 13th. I go in for allergy testing tomorrow (they had to wait 4-6 weeks for the effects of the anaphylaxis to subside). The hope is that they will find the culprit and proceed on Monday!

I've had a lot of time for reflection and prayer, which has actually been a great and unforeseen blessing. I thought I was prepared before, but now I see that I was not. I must have needed this time. I'm ready now.