New Heart Of Steel: Why My Sick Hubby Is Lucky

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Sometimes it goes fast, sometimes it’s just a steady beat. It’s not quite a grandfather clock but it’s louder than a wrist watch. It’s always noiser at night and the rhythmic chirping reminds me of the sound of crickets in tropical, balmy climes. Except we’re not anywhere tropical. Not even near. We’re in Chicago. And we haven’t got a new clock. My husband has a new heart.

It’s not a brand new one, just modified – with steel. He has the bacterial meningitis to thank for the refined organ. It took over his body, suddenly, and with little warning, leaving him in a coma for a week and damaging two of his heart valves. So he now has two steel, mechanical ones instead, installed during open heart surgery. He’s only 35.

It has been nearly two weeks since his new ticker (never has that word been more appropriate) was put in by a leading heart surgeon, the brilliant Hyde M. Russell MD. Beforehand, we were told one of his aortic valves would be replaced and the streptococcus bacteria physically removed from the area. But once the surgeon looked at the heart in theatre, he saw there was significant damage to another valve. And so he now has two fake ones and a huge scar to boot.

Despite my husband’s misfortunes – and many would brand him very unlucky indeed to have been through two life-threatening illness in three years (in 2012 he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma) – but in many ways he has been very fortunate. I always like to look for the positives so here are five reasons why my husband is lucky.

1. He was in Chicago with work colleagues who have known him for years. They went to look for him in his hotel room when he didn’t turn up for breakfast. Things could have been a lot different if he had been there on his own or with people who didn’t know him. Instead, his colleagues found him – confused and disorientated.

2. Knowing something was seriously wrong, they acted quickly and called an ambulance so he got to hospital fast (despite the hotel workers thinking he was drunk). Doctors told us later he could have been as little as one hour from dying.

3. He was in the right place. The U.S. has brilliant medical facilities and the  Northwestern hospital is not only the best in Chicago but one of the leading hospitals in the US. The medical team there are excellent.

4. A senior A&E doctor was on shift who recognised what could be wrong and it was his quick thinking to put him straight onto several different types of antibiotics which saved his life.

5. He is young and fit so despite a week in a coma and contracting pneumonia too, he was strong enough to undergo vital heart surgery.

So we have lots to be thankful for and I have a renewed respect for the medical profession. All the doctors, consultants, surgeons and nurses have been amazing. I know they are only doing their jobs but their work has such a huge impact on people’s lives. I’m in awe.

On the negative side, recovering from heart surgery is a long process, especially after lying in bed for over a week beforehand. He has had to learn how to walk again, regain his appetite (that didn’t take long) and for the time being has to follow strict guidelines on everyday actions as his breast bone (the sternum) had to be broken to perform the surgery. For instance, he can’t lift both his arms above his head or behind his back, is unable to drive and there will be no lifting our daughter for a while.

He also has a ton of pills to take every morning and evening.

Long term, he will have to take an anticoagulant – which thins the blood and stops it from clotting – everyday for the rest of his life. It will mean frequent monitoring by doctors and he will have to be very careful not to injure himself and avoid situations in which he may gets cuts and grazes – like contact sports. He will also have to cut down on drinking, in his words: “my boozing days are over”. What has happened to him will mean changes to our life and a wider awareness of our actions but we will work it out.

And then there is the tick tock, tick tock. Well, that’s a small sound to bear in the grand scheme of things. At night, when it’s quiet, I’ll pretend it IS the sound of crickets and imagine I am in a far off tropical country… it’ll keep me going until we really are somewhere hot, and knowing us, that shouldn’t be too far away.