I would like to thank all of you who sent your thoughts and prayers for me and my family. That is one of the reasons I love this site. People here can vent their frustrations without being criticized.
There are a couple of people here who I felt were telling me I was wrong about my anger towards the mayo clinic. for one, I am not a liar, never have been. WHen I say my father in law trained the surgeons, he did. HE was the one who did the stuff, because for one, he had a steady hand, and two, he was good at it. He had a better reputation than many of the surgeons there that make a lot of money, and I would have been happy to have HIM do my valve surgery. He actually helped me out with the wires in my sternum.
Another point, I grew up in Rochester, going to the Mayo Clinic all the time for everything. Trust me, they are not that good. They have the reputation for being one of the best, but.....when it comes to services they offer, like assigning ONE doctor to a patient, and listening to the families who might actually know what they are talking about, they fall extremely short. My grandmother had just had heart surgery, you would think that there would be a cardiologist following her, but.....they didn't see any need to have one following up on her. WHen she ended up back in the hospital two days after going home the first time, she had gelled bloody puss in her lungs. Do you think that they did a culture of the puss to see what it was? Nope. WHen my family asked them to, they said no, that they weren't worried about it. When she stopped eating completely, and my family asked them about a feeding tube so she could get nourishment, do you think they listened? Nope, it took them 6 weeks to put in a feeding tube because she had lost a lot of weight and grown too weak to open her eyes. They only cultured the infectious stuff in her lungs like 3 days before they decided it was too late that there was nothing that could be done. In other words, she had either Staph, or Psuedomonas in her lungs that spread throughout her body, and her organs just shut down. That is actually what the last doctor of about 30 or 40 she had said. In other words, to say this in words that are understandable by all, she SHOULD have survived, and very well could have, BUT for the fact that they didn't act fast enough doing the cultures and treatment on the bacteria that was in her lungs, AND the fact that they did not take action and put a feeding tube in her 5 weeks before they did. Shame on the docs at the mayo clinic for thinking that they knew more than a family that has many many medical professionals in it, AND, who has people who have been through this at a much better facility.
My grandmother was a huge part of my life, and now instead of living with anger, I know that I must move on and live my life, and keep her in my memory, and in my heart, and know that she will always be with me, watching over me. Rest in Peace, Esperance Fuller....age 78, mother of 9, grandmother of many, and loved by each and every one of us!