The journey continues

I began having problems again. The shortness of breath and feeling of tightness in my chest we becoming more and more frequent. After many visits again, another stress test and heart cath, it was discovered that I would need another surgery. This time it would be a single bypass and the cardiologist wanted to do a new procedure where they actually went through the back to get to the heart. The surgery was done and everything seemed to be good. Within a couple of months, I was having problems again. They were even getting worse than they were before the second surgery. I made an appointment with my cardiologist, but when I got to the office, I ended up seeing the Physician's Assistant. He did not want to believe that I could be having problems already (it had only less than 3 months since my last surgery). I continued to have problems and thank goodness, my Family Physician believed that I was having symptoms and ordered another Stress Test which did come back with some abnormalities. Because of my history and the fact that I could not get my cardiologist to accept that I was having problems, my family physician felt that I needed to see another, more specialized physician. He referred me to a cardiologist at the UAB Medical Center that was a specialized cardiac surgeon. He fowarded my records and we waited for a call. This was right before Christmas. The physician at UAB called me and stated that he felt that I needed to be seen as soon as possible and since Christmas was soon (less than a week), he would schedule me for January 2nd. He scheduled me for surgery at that time, because he stated that looking at the results of my records and recent tests, that it was obvious that I required surgery. He also told me and my family that he would rather wait at least 6 months between surgeries to allow the body to heal, but that he did not feel that I would live long enough if I did not have the surgery. (My second surgery was in September). I would be having 3 open heart surgeries within a 2 year and 2 month period of time. The holidays came and went and on January 1, 2002, me, my husband Kenny and my mother and father made the trip to Birmingham to be admitted the next day.

A lot of what I will tell you about my hospital stay in Birmingham is based on what I have been told by family members. My memory of that time in my life is very little. I was admitted on January 2 and was scheduled for a heart cath that day. My husband states that when I came out of the procedure I told him that something was wrong....that I felt a pop in my head during the procedure. It would not be discovered until the next day and my surgery as to what exactly that was...........