David's Aortic Valve Adventure
blank spacer
In 2016 my wonderful GP (Dr Tamsin Rimmer) detected that I was developing a problem with my aortic valve and referred me to the Cardiac Centre at RPH. The head honcho there, Mr Bose, decided not to let the problem affect the rest of my heart and arranged to do a valve replacement pdq, and certainly within 3 months. I attended BVH for a CT scan in December, and was subsequently called for a pre-op on Wednesday 15th March 2017, with the op to be performed the following Monday 20th.

The pre-op was a mess. There were a couple of minor glitches but the first significant problem was that no anaesthetist had been booked for the op (and the pre-op). After a panic one was eventually roped in but gave me some wrong info. The CT scan of my chest showed that my heart has an unusual configuration, so that the standard "spread eagle" method of valve replacement was not possible. Instead the surgeon had elected to do a "keyhole" procedure (involving only breaking one of my ribs), which made life more difficult for him but which should have made my recovery quicker and less stressful. The anaesthetist did not know of this change! Neither did I, which I found irritating later. The second problem was that the date for the op had been brought forward to the following day, which made a nonsense of our arrangements.

On Thursday Janice drove me to Lytham, to her son Mark, who took both of us to BVH for 0700. After some initial prepping I was taken down at 0800 for the op. Janice was told that I would be unconscious for about 3 hours and then, allowing for a few minutes of recovery time, she could come and see me in the CICU (Critical Intensive Care Unit) - ie some time before 12 noon.

No-one has ever said what went wrong, or why, but I was unconscious for 24 hours, finally surfacing at 0900 on Friday. It was deemed unsafe to move me from the recovery room as planned, which made a mess of the subsequent programme for the theatre, and I was kept there until after 1800. All that time Janice was forgotten but eventually a nurse was directed to take her to the staff canteen (all the public outlets were closed by then) and given a meal, having had nothing since breakfast at 0600. She was then taken to the CICU to await my arrival on the theatre trolley. She was sitting very close by as the staff transferred me from the theatre trolley to the ward bed and thus witnessed the major haemorrhage which followed, and the pints of blood which were pumped into me in replacement - a horrifying experience for her.

At 2100 the medics decided not to risk me surfacing during the night, when they wouldn't be present, so they boosted my sedation and then told Janice to get lost. A 78-year-old lady abandoned late at night, in a strange environment, with a husband in an apparently bad way and no help offered - appalling! She rang Mark, who rushed to the rescue. He also brought her back for 0700 the following morning.

The usual procedure is to keep the patient in the CICU for 2 days, then the ICU for 3 days and then discharge. I was in the CICU for 4 days before being considered well enough for the ICU, but was in the ICU for only 2 days before being thrown out (almost literally) onto the carpark and abandoned, with a bag of medications. This included a pain management regime consisting of 5 days' paracetamol. Whoopee.

I will gloss over the next 3 weeks as too painful to think about now, but it seems that somebody had done something unscripted, with the result that my lungs slowly filled with blood, which congealed into clots (like it's supposed to do) and increasingly restricted my breathing. Inevitably I finally collapsed from lack of oxygen and within hours of fatal asphyxiation was shipped into RPH, where the staff fought valiantly (and successfully) for a fortnight to keep me breathing.

The good thing about all this, apart from the fact that I'm still alive, is that in 6 weeks I lost 3½ stone, which has done me good.

blank spacer

blank spacer