I Will Survive HF

Living with Heart Disease is one thing. Living with Heart Failure is quite different.

I actually didn't realize I had HF until 2 1/2 months after my open heart surgery. I was asked by Dr. Pasqual to have an echo cardiogram. Not sure what that would mean.

I knew that I had SOB, shortness of breath, but I thought it was a by -product of the 4 bypasses. The SOB would go away in time.

I work in a hospital and know the people in cardiology. I asked Mary Ella, the echo tech if she would perform the test,under the radar so to speak, as my insurance only pays for 1 every 6 months. Since Mary Ella and Dr. Pascual are friends she agreed to the task.

During the echo, which is much like a sonogram for pregnancy, two techs were in the room. Mary Ella and a newbie who was learning the echo stuff that newbies have to learn. There was a lot of knob turning, button pushing, moving the cold slimy wand around to get the best picture, and a lot of tech speech. I don't speak techie so I didn't quite under stand what they were saying.


I think techs should speak English since we're in America. But that's straying from the post.

If you want to know more about echo cardiograms check out this site.
http://www.heartsite.com/html/echocardiogram.html


Any way after the procedure I asked Mary Ella for the results. I know Mary Ella and have had other procedures with her and if the test is negative, she will let you know. This is what she told me. " You need to talk to Dr. Pascual. It looks like there's no change."


What? There's no change from what? I wasn't sure what she was telling me no change. I could tell by the look on her face that this wasn't good.


About an hour later Dr. Pascual came to my office and closed the door. This can't be good. He told me not much had changed since the bypasses. I knew this much and said so. Then he started telling me that there was more damage to the heart than he had expected.

Dr. Pascual said that my EF had not improved. Then he explained that the left ventricle pumps oxygenated blood through out the body. My heart is pumping around 30%. So not all the blood pumped in is pumping out. This could lead to arrhythmia's and cardiac arrest.

It was my third heart attack which caused the damage. He recommend an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator, ICD. This would prevent sudden cardiac death.

What? No one had told me I was in danger of sudden death. What do I do until the ICD. Lay in bed and do nothing? I had to work. I had to continue as normal a life as I could. And try to block the words "sudden death" out of my mind.

So while waiting for 3 months per protocol. I had my forth cardiac event.
This pushed my ICD back another month.

Did you know insurance is betting you won't live long enough to have this $30,000.00 device implanted. That my assessment.

I would like to say I still wasn't sure what Dr. Pascual was saying. It didn't make since that I had CHF, congestive heart failure. I felt fine unless I walked fast or did exercise. Which left me with SOB. So it was my HF that was the cause of SOB. Now I under stand what HF means. I read a lot on the Internet to find out what I was dealing with. Some sites were reassuring and others scary.

But people with low EF can reverse this and the heart muscle will repair itself. As I have said before the heart is an amazing organ. I will survive hopefully for years to come.

Rick O'Shea