It's All In The Heart!

As of the end of this year, I have run a total of 8 marathons! I used to really enjoy running them, but this year, for some reason, I seemed to be having problems with my breathing and my stamina. I knew that I had asthma, which I believe was mostly runner induced, but it seemed to get worse this year for some reason. After running the Salt Lake and Ogden marathons in the spring and finding that my stamina just wasn't getting any better, I decided to go see my pulmonologist to see what was going on and to possibly resolve any issues before I had to run my next marathon...the St. George Marathon! Do you know what he told me? He asked me if I had ever thought that it might just be because I was getting older! When he said that, I just smiled and told him that I was willing to accept that, if that was what it was, but I wanted to rule out other things before I settled for that as my answer.

The doctor sent me to get a stress echo, which involved running on a treadmill and an ultrasound of my heart to see what was going on. At the same time, he threw in a “bubble study” because I just happened to mention that my dear friend had found that she had a hole in her heart and her symptoms seemed to be similar to mine. I think he threw in that “bubble study” just to appease me, but it turned out to be a “tender mercy”. While they were doing my “bubble study” they realized I had a hole in my heart too!

I was almost relieved to hear that there really was a reason that might be causing me to have breathing problems but I had no idea what was ahead of me. Once they determined I had the hole, they had to figure out how big it was, so they sent me for more tests. They also sent me to get an MRI to see if I’d had any “events”, which I found out later was the same as “mini strokes”. Well I’ve had a lot of migraines in my life and I’ve heard them referred to as “mini strokes” before, so I was interested to see what the tests would show.

The doctor scheduled an MRI and a couple of other tests and then I was supposed to go see him 2 weeks later. However, when they called me on a Friday night at 7:30, the same day they had done my tests to tell me that I had a small hole that was going to require surgery...I knew it was probably even more serious than I thought. I mean, when does a doctor’s office ever call you the same day to give you results to a test...and on a Friday night at that?

The next Monday morning, I got a call from the surgeon’s office to schedule my surgery and although they had an appointment that Wednesday, I opted to put it off at least a week because I had too many other responsibilities to take care of. So on November 2^nd, I went in for a simple surgery. The surgery wasn’t supposed to take longer than a couple of hours and all it required was that they cut a small hole at the top of my leg and go in through an artery to my heart so they could insert an “occluder” (that I thought looked similar to a jelly fish) in my heart that would seal up that hole and gradually the cells would grow over it and so it would become a part of my heart.

When they were prepping me for surgery, I was informed that I wasn’t going to be fully sedated because they needed to be able to communicate with me as they inserted the occluder. To say that I wasn’t too happy about that would be putting it lightly! I mean, they had to insert the occluder through a vein in my leg and they had to put it in my heart, which meant that all of my “private parts” were going to be exposed…and I didn’t want to be coherent enough to realize that! Fortunately, even though I was “awake” I can’t remember much of anything!

Before I went into surgery, the doctors all emphasized that my hole was quite small, but they never told me just how small. Their concern was that my MRI showed that I had had several mini strokes and I also had a thing called Factor Five that had to do with the fact that my blood tends to clot more than a normal persons...which in combination were all prime factors for a stroke...thus their concern!

Well as it turns out, once they started the surgery, the small hole (which I later found out was supposed to be 2mm in size) turned out to be not even close to small! It was not only NOT small, it was 20mm! The occluders they had weren’t even big enough for a hole that size, so they quickly had to call other hospitals to see if they had one big enough. Fortunately, they had one at Primary Children’s hospital and my surgery was being done at the U of U hospital, so they just had to walk across the way to get it, but my short, simple surgery turned out to be anything but short and simple! However, I was definitely lucky because they said that if my hole would have been any bigger, they would have had to do open heart surgery! What a blessing it is that they had found my hole before anything major happened to me!

After the surgery, I had to stay in the hospital overnight so they could monitor me, but other than a huge bruise on my leg, I really had no major side effects. I had to lay off any strenuous exercise for a full month, but as soon as that month was over, I was right back running and swimming just like I had been before! I can’t say that I feel SO much better than I did before, but I also haven’t run any big miles yet...so I have yet to see if I can feel a difference and I truly hope I can!