My Job Helped Save My Life

I started working for GE Medical Systems back in 1985. Little did I know one day my job would help save my life. I repair CAT scanners for GE. The latest CAT scanners are used to image most parts of the body. The newest models can be use to image parts of the body that were once done by specialized equipment. Some of those studies include imaging the heart, and colon. I was on my way to a hospital to work on a network issue the hospital was having. I received a voicemail from another service engineer asking if anyone wanted to volunteer for a heart score exam on a new CT that was just installed. I headed to the site and was scanned as soon as I arrived. The heart score scan checks for calcifications build up around the heart. Being 41 years old and in good health my "score" should have been and was zero. I was glad to hear the results and headed off to another clinic that wanted to move a CT. I received and urgent voice mail to call the doctor at the clinic where I had been scanned. I talked to the doctor and he said he had just sat down to look at the new scanner and review some of the images that had been taken. He noticed I had an Aneurysm.

Aneurysms occur when the wall of the aorta or arteries weaken and swell like a balloon. He let me know that I needed to get in touch with my primary doctor and a cardiac surgeon ASAP. He gave me is cell phone number and said to have my primary doctor call him to talk about it. My first thoughts were that if he was giving out his personal cell number it must be bad. My second though was I had to call my wife and tell her I had a time bomb in my chest and I could die at any moment. Just five minutes ago I was perfectly healthy. I would roller blade 40 to 50 miles a week; water ski and I had plans to hike Half Dome in Yosemite with friends. Now I knew I had the same thing John Ritter had just die of. I was told the first symptom of aneurysms is usually death. I had mixed feeling about this - glad to know that I had a problem but worried about what my future would be like.

It started to hit home how serious the problem was by how fast I got my appointments with the doctors I needed to see. After talking to my surgeon I knew part of my aorta would need to be replaced. They replace it with a man-made material, Dacron. I was told this material should outlast me. The biggest concern raised was if my heart valve was damaged because of the aneurysm. If my valve needed to be replaced, I had an option of an animal valve or a mechanical one. The down side of the animal valve is that it would have to be replaced in 15 to 20 years. This option is better for older patients. The main problem with the mechanical value is that I would have to take blood thinners for the rest of my life. My next appointment was with a cardiologist. He would be doing my heart cath and having an echocardiogram done. The echocardiogram showed very little leakage of my value, which was great news to me. My biggest hope and prayer was that I got to keep my valve. I went to the hospital for my heart cauterization. This went smooth and was easier and faster then I had thought. We work on the hospitals imaging equipment, so my co-workers and I knew most of the staff working on me. This put me at ease and must have done the same for the hospital staff because when I came completely to, I noticed my finger and toenails were painted with pink finger nail polish. The doctors now had the information they needed, and I was scheduled for open-heart surgery on November 6th 2003.

I was prepped for the operation and given a shot to start to put me out. I was asleep before I made it to the elevator. I was told the surgery took about 3 hours. I started to come to and had an issue with the breathing tube. I felt I couldn’t breath, I tried to reach for the tube to pull it out but my hands were tied down. I then tried kicking free from the restraints but someone was there to hold my feet down. My wife and a friend were there and saw the panic on my face. After maybe 30 seconds the doctors put me back under. The second time I awoke the breathing tube was out and I was laying in SICU. The great news was that my heart valve wasn’t replaced. I was on my back with more tubes and IV’s then I could count coming out of me. The two largest tubes were in my abdomen were about the diameter of a finger. They were there to drain fluid from around my heart and chest. These large tubes went about 12 inches inside my body and would be removed last. I was walking by the second day, which is something the doctors wanted to see. The only real pain I had was from the mixture of items sticking into my body. Some of the pain was so bad that at times I couldn’t move. I could feel things pushing into my lung or a nerve, so once you got into a comfortable position you stayed there. As the days went by some of the tubes and needles were removed and my pain was greatly reduced. I went home after 5 days and was glad to be home with my wife and girls. I felt good and would have short walks twice a day. By the fourth day at home I couldn’t walk as far and had to rest every couple of hundred feet. By Sunday night I came up the stairs in my home and collapsed. Monday morning I had to go to the ER. After about an hour in ER they performed an Echocardiogram of my heart. It’s then they notice I had about 800cc of fluid around my heart. Normally there is small amount maybe 20 cc. The fluid was barely allowing my heart to beat and would have stopped it if the problem hadn't been found. I was rushed to CT for a CT guided draining of my pericardial sac. I started feeling better during the procedure and the color came back to my face. I stayed in the hospital just so they could monitor my condition. After the third day in the hospital I started feeling bad and knew something was wrong. It’s then the doctors realized I still had about 400cc of fluid around my heart that the drain tube they had installed would not drain. I was scheduled for another open-heart surgery the following day. The surgery seems to have gone well and I have no memory of the breathing tube being removed - which was a huge relief to me. I stayed in the hospital ten days this time and was release on Thanksgiving Day 2003. I’ve been counting the days since. I have been praying that I never have to go back to the hospital for anything that serious. The only restrictions I had was that I can’t drive and should not be near an air bag for six weeks. Of course coughing and sneezing are two things that come with some reservation because of the pain on my chest. I started back to work today Jan 5th 2004 and feel great.

Testimony

It was the little things that all added up over the day. First they told me they were booked up and couldn’t scan me. An hour later they said if I could get there in half an hour they had an opening. Most important was this scan was really just for the CT tech to practice Smart Score scanning. Their tech didn’t see any problems (of course, that’s not his or her job). The way my aneurysm was found was a doctor was walking by the scanner and just happened to sit down and start checking out the new CT. The doctor wasn’t there to review the images. He just happened across my scan and noticed the aneurysm. So I’m alive today because everything lined up just right. I figure God had a hand in it.