I almost died!
In the early hours of Aug 11th, I woke up extremely short of breath. I stood up to see if that would improve my breathing and ended up passing out back on the bed. Thank goodness I fell back onto the bed, because that woke up my husband. He woke me up and asked if I was ok and I told him to call 911. I could not breathe and I had a horrible pain in my stomach.
I was taken to the ER by ambulance and I was a mess. My body was shutting down. My BP was in the 60’s, I was hypoxic, my labs were terrible. They were telling my family that I was extremely acidotic. Since the pain was in my stomach, they did a CT scan but didn’t find anything. A chest Xray showed enlarged heart, so they did an echocardiogram and found a lot of fluid around my heart. I was experiencing Cardiac Tamponade.
I had emergency surgery to open up my pericardium, drain the fluid and also place a catheter to continue draining anything else that collects. I had the drain in place for 8 days. Today they finally took it out and I’m hoping to go home tomorrow.
It was the scariest thing in my life.
The doctor said it was caused by my modified Ravitch. Since my anatomy was already messy due to the failed repair 30years ago, my sternum and heart were practically adhered together. There was a cardiac surgeon present in my original surgery to ensure the separation of my heart and sternum went smoothly; however, there was slight trauma and blood clots formed in my pericardium. My body was trying to break down the clots, causing inflammation and increased fluid collection. Even though my surgery was 6 weeks prior, I almost died from complications.
Just a warning to take care of yourself and remember that just because you’re almost at the 6 week mark, you can still have complications and you need to listen to your body.