Bump for bbuck

[SusQ]

So everything was going well for hubby until last Sunday when he seemed to gradually start declining. He got.progressively weaker and was pale. Saw the cardiologist Tuesday and he sent us for bloodwork and an ekg. Determined anemia and was told to take iron twice a day. Next day I called his pcp to follow up on his iron levels and had to wait for a nurse to call back. Hubby continued to get weaker and was beyond pale. Took him to the ER on Thursday, he was shipped by ambulance 100 miles away to a bigger hospital that has cardio thoracic surgeons.

Good thing.

Had emergency surgery yesterday to remove a liter of blood from around his heart. He's doing well right now. They also do not want him going back on warfarin. The thinned blood was leaking at the aortic graft, apparently a pretty.common issue.

I know we have more tests to deal with, but hopefully.nothing else goes wrong. Hubby says this surgery.was way.more painful than the ohs.

 

[karla]

Wow. Thinking of you both. Keep us posted!

 

[dwhist]

I had the same thing happen to me back in January about 9 weeks after my AVR surgery. In my case they said it was some kind of inflamation and they gave me steriods for a few days. Now almost 5 months later and no issues anymore. I think you can search pericardial window or pericardial effusion on the forum and find others with the issue.

Happy to hear they caught it in time. I had been to doc 3 days before my emergency surgery and he said I was fine, still recovering. Then he had second thoughts and sent me in for a CT scan that showed the fluid buildup.

 

[Duffey]

I'm sorry to read this, but I have read of similar cases post-surgery on the site. It's a good thing you took him to the ER when you did. Although there are many possible post-op complications from avr,
after a certain point, and when no progress seems to being made, it's time to take action and push for an answer.

I look forward to future posts that say he is recovering without incident.:smile2:

 

[RBCola]

I had a similar experience after my tissue AVR. Two weeks post op started having some mild shortness of breath and then developed a fever. Went to the ER and was diagnosed with a pericardial effusion. Was in the ICU for another 5 days during which they did a pericardiocentesis to drain 1 liter of fluid in my pericardial sac. Also, had a blood culture come back positive for e. coli, which they thought was just contamination because only 1 of the 2 came back positive. They still had to play it safe and put me on IV antibiotics for 2 months. They placed a PICC line in my arm so I could do the IV antibiotics at home after discharge.

No post-op problems after that...thankfully.