For those of you who do not know the history, I will try to tell you as briefly as possible. 15 years ago Tim was diagnosed with Hypertrophic Obstructive Cardiomyopathy. His heart has to work really hard all the time to push blood through the heart. This has caused the muscle in the heart to become very large but also very weak. He has over the years developed a hole in his heart and his heart valves have become damaged. Up until February of this year, he just had to take a pill every day to keep him stable. In February he suddenly started bleeding severely. He bled for 6 days before the doctors were able to find where he was bleeding from. He had 12 units of blood transfused, several scopes to attempt to find the source of the bleed then eventually on the 7th day he had a bowel resection to cut out 2 tumors that were the cause of it. All of this put a major strain on his heart. He went from being extremely active and independent and hard working to being extremely weak. His cardiologist then told us that there was nothing else he could do for Tim and that he needed to have heart surgery. We were sent to a cardio-thoracic surgeon in Memphis who did more tests and ultimately has told us that Tim is to the point that he has to have a procedure called a septal myectomy which is to go into the heart and cut away a large part of the muscle in the middle of his heart that divides the right and left side of the heart. He also has to have the hole in his heart patched, his valve repaired and the cords that hold the valve in place repaired. If he doesnt have this procedure he will die. In the process of planning for this heart surgery, his records from February were reviewed by the surgeon. It was found that a Ct Scan in February had shown a mass on his adrenal gland that had been suspicious for cancer. The Ct report had never been reviewed or acknowledged by the doctors at that time, therefore we were not completely shocked to find out that we had to rule out cancer before we could proceed with his heart surgery. At that time it was decided that I had to leave my job in California to come home for tests to find out about this mass. We had scheduled a biopsy the week before were told if the biopsy was ok we would go forward with his heart surgery right afterward. Well the biopsy was done but could not rule out cancer. We then had a PET scan that also was not able to rule out cancer. The next step was to have surgery to take out the tumor. The next Monday, June 23, we went in for what was supposed to be a laproscopic surgery to remove tumor. It was expected that we would go home the next morning. Surgery was expected to be about an hour and a half, 5 and a half hours later Tim was out of surgery and taken to the ICU to simply monitor closely due to his heart condition. Over the next 36 hours, Tim was given large amounts of IV fluids despite my arguing with the nurses that he has a very weak heart and could not tolerate that much fluid. I cried and begged for something to be done because I knew he wasnt breathing well. I was ignored in my concerns. He was in respiratory distress for 27 hours before we were taken seriously. by that point he was so bad that he had to be put on life support. He had no blood pressure. His heart was beating 150 times a min. He was still unable to get air into his lungs even on the ventilator. The doctor did a procedure called a bronch where the went into his lungs with a scope and washed out his lungs. Finally his lungs could get air into them. His oxygen levels finally went up. It was determined that he had flash pulmonary edema, which is where the lungs are flooded with fluid. He also had developed severe pneumonia and his lungs were also filled with mucous. He was on life support for 3 days and it was determined that he also had a heart attack at the time that his heart was working so hard at 150/min. Yet again all of this put so much stress on his heart and his body. He did pull through that ordeal despite the initial prognosis. He came back to surprise us all. He came home 2 weeks after he went in for surgery. His heart surgery was postponed because they said he wasnt strong enough to live through it. Now we have to move forward with heart surgery. We have since found out how rare this surgery is. The surgeon in Memphis is the only surgeon in this region who performs this surgery and he only does it 6 times a year. We looked at the possibility of going to Stanford University Hospital in San Francisco so that I could return to work. We were told this was one of the best facilities for this procedure and were trying to find a way to have an income and surgery. Yesterday I found out that they only do this about 14 times a year. That is not very reassuring. We have now found out that the best place to go with the most experience in this dangerous procedure is the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. I have been in contact with the surgeons coordinator there and they are going to review his records next week. They are now scheduling surgeries for the end of September. They will let me know if after reviewing records they believe he would survive until then to get surgery. I am now faced with the difficult decision to attempt to go back to California to work for 7 weeks and leave him alone in order to be able to pay for our bills as well as all of the doctor bills and travel expenses that will be required for this next journey. Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers. I could never express my gratitude for all of the prayers, calls, texts, food and money donated to try to help my family during this difficult time. I have always had a difficult time accepting help from anyone for anything. But under these circumstances all I can say is thank you from the bottom of my heart
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 17:53:33 +0000