About Me (In My Own Words)
My name is Don and I had open heart surgery July 21, 2009. It has been over 10 years since that operation and the heart is still chugging along. I had my Aortic Valve replaced with a bovine version and my Mitral valve was repaired. I guess you would like a little information regarding my operation. Back in 2005, on my annual visit to my VA primary care physician, who just happened to be a cardiologist in his civilian practice. He noticed that I had a heart murmur, which my non VA regular Primary doctor did not even notice. I then found a non VA cardiologist as my second opinion doctor. I used 2 cardiologists to verify what the other was saying. From that point forward, I was at the VA for a checkup and Echo every 6 months. In 2008, I started getting conflicting information from each of the cardiologists. The VA doctor was getting concerned while the non VA cardiologist was saying you are doing fine,don't worry.
January of 2009 arrived and at my VA doctors appointment, my VA doctor went through his normal process and at the end of the visit, he decided to schedule me for an Echo in June of 2009. Then he said, "you really need to start getting a good heart surgeon lined up soon". I set up an appointment at the non VA cardiologist and he said, "The murmur is a little worse, but nothing to worry about".
June of 2009 came, and I had my Echo. At the VA doctors visit he looked at the Echo and said, "Don, if you do not get that heart taken care of in the next month or so, do not bother to set up another appointment with me, because you will not be around to make it!". I scheduled another appointment at the non-VA doctor and he was still adamant that I was OK. Oh, and the non-VA primary care doctor agreed with the VA doctor.
After some research, we had selected a heart surgeon. I was lucky enough to get an appointment in a few days as he had a cancellation. Upon looking at the Echo and its data and listening to my heart, he scheduled me for an operation within 2 weeks. He was in agreement with the VA doctor.
On July 21, 2009, I had to be at the hospital at 6 am. I do not remember what the delay was, but I did not get operated on until in the afternoon. The operation went well. I opened my eyes the next morning and lucky for me, I remembered my wife's name along with my children's names, but something was not right. OK, so I was on Morphine, but I was having a difficult time trying to remember things prior to the operation. I mean a lot of things, like my childhood and most of everything prior to the operation. The non-VA cardiologist came in early and asked how I was. I explained that my memory seemed to have been compromised and I can not remember most things prior to my operation. He said, don't worry it is the anesthesia and it can take a year to wear off. I accepted that.
So, now it is time to get released. All I needed to do was walk around the hospital floor and come back to the room. I made it 50 feet and I could hear all kinds of alarms going off in the direction of my room. The nurse that was stationed outside my room for the last 2 days, keeping watch on me, came running yelling STOP!!! I had gone into a MAJOR case of Afib. They plopped me down in a wheel chair and I had to go back to my room for another day. I was NOT a happy camper. Within an hour the Afib was gone and has never reappeared again.
Through the next 365 days, I struggled with memory issues. At work, I had a white-board in my office that had post-it notes around the boarder of the board. 3 colors. RED - Project was in jeopardy, Yellow - Projects that can go either way and GREEN - Projects that were on schedule. At least 30 post-its. All the meetings that I called or attended were either recorded or I kept notes in college notebooks. When I finally had to go on disability I had 7 notebooks full of meeting/call notes. What made me retire early was that when I left work each day my blood pressure was well above 150 and on some days at 170. I would have to have to pull over on trips home to take a nitro pill, because the chest pain was really bad. When I stopped working, my blood pressure stayed around 130/84. My chest pains, for the most part stopped, but I still had MAJOR memory issues.
On my 1 year doctors visit with the non-VA cardiologist I informed him that I had to stop working because I had a lack of memory. I informed him that if I called a meeting, within 4 hours I would have forgotten some of the people that were in the meeting. At the end of the day, I would have forgotten most of the people that attended the meeting. The next day, I did not remember what was discussed in the meeting or sometimes did not remember the meeting (college notebook was a life saver). He said that there usually is an issue with memory after open heart surgery. He never mentioned prior to the surgery that there are extreme cases, probably because I would have had second thoughts about the operation. That was the last time I saw him!!! I now have the GREATEST cardiologist around.
Memory or lack of.... Ten plus years later and after seeing a memory doctor at the VA and a non-VA doctor, they acknowledged that my working memory and short term memory were compromised. My short-term to long term memory was compromised as was my long term. The most frustrating problem is when I am sitting at my desk at home and I want to look something up, I go to the laptop, sit down look up at the monitor for a split second and then I look at the laptop and can not remember what I wanted to lookup. Same with the iPhone. I want to look something up, I click to access the iPhone and the thought is lost forever. A lot worse that the related old age memory forgetting issue.
The real kicker was that my IQ dropped from 158 as a kid to 112 after the operation. I still had my grammar school results on file and took like 4 IQ tests on the internet and they were all about the same, around 112. I now go to a movie and within 2 weeks I have no recollection of the movie or any scenes in it. A real "Pump Head"!
My life is now controlled by my iPhone's appointments, clock alerts and calendar. Without them, well there would be a lot of missed medicines and appointments. I have totally adapted to this way of life and I even amaze myself at all that gets accomplished using these tactics. Although there are some missed things, because I did not take the time to enter them in my iPhone ASAP.
As I am in my 10th year since the operation, and as research shows that the bovine valve lasts between 10 and 15 years, I am looking for the best possible method for a second heart valve surgery. I already know that my mitral valve will also need work. I do NOT want to go with the blood machine again, as I can not afford to compromise any of my remaining memory. I really need to get help on trying to figure what the other options are that will work for me. Getting on the blood machine is not an option for the next operation.
Adam, thank you for this site. It has been a real help and packed with useful information!!!!
More Info About Me & My Heart
More About Me
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I am from:
Dunedin, Florida
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My surgery date is:
July 21, 2009
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My surgeon is:
Dr. J Crayton Pruitt JR
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My hospital is:
Morton Plant Hospital, Clearwater, Florida, 33756
