[edahle]

7/8/21

Follow up to my earlier June 15^th post prior to my wife’s open heart surgery:

On Thursday June 17th, they took my wife to surgery. The doctor came out after they finished. He reported that the plan going in changed dramatically when they began the process of the bypass. They harvested the veins from her right arm and left leg in preparation. When they opened her chest, and went in they found that the ascending aorta was severely inflamed. He said that normal wall thickness is less than a millimeter and that it is flexible. Her ascending aorta had a 6mm wall thickness and was not pliable. He determined that he could not do the normal triple bypass that was planned. He said, during the first graft, it was very difficult to ensure the stitches went all the way through due to the thickened wall and he was concerned with fragility of the tissue, and decided not to attach another graft to the inflamed aorta. He did not use the vein from the leg and instead used another blood supply (not clear to me which one it was) to do the second bypass. He also said that the inflammation was what restricted the right and left coronary arties. He was worried about the efficacy of the graft and left her open on the table for about an hour to monitor the sutures in the aorta. He confirmed that there was no plaque build-up on in her arteries and the restricted flow was due to the unusual inflammation. He stated that it was possible that if they had earlier diagnosed the inflammation as the cause of the restriction it might have been possible to avoid surgery and that treating the inflammation could have cleared the restrictions on the vessels. I asked again if this might be related either to Covid or to the vaccine. This time he said that he did not know and that he would consult with others. He also reported that he took a small sample of the aorta out and had sent it to the lab for testing. He did not indicate which tests they would do or what they were looking for specifically.

Since then we have met with both her cardiologists and asked if they had any root cause. None has been presented. They are sending us to a Rheumatologist to look for some autoimmune disorder explanation. Perhaps this will result in a serious effort to rule out Covid or a vaccine reaction.

At
this point it appears to me that not one single medical professional will look
seriously at the idea that this could be related to a Covid infection or to the
vaccine. I keep presenting the idea that this should be something we at least
should look at seriously as a root cause, and they look right past it without
considering how they might investigate and rule it out. If treating the inflammation
early would have eliminated the need for costly dangerous open heart surgery
which caused significant harm to my wife and our family, it seems reasonable to
expect them to try to understand the underlying cause and identify ways to
avoid subjecting someone else to this risk.
Instead they are afraid of the answer, unwilling to expend the effort,
or worse have no idea how to think through solving the problem. If there is someone that may be able to
suggest a test on the tissue sample they took from the aorta that might rule
out or confirm a connection to the virus or the vaccine I would like to take
that to our next appointment. If we can
identify this as a potential effect of the virus or vaccine and it can be
shared with other health care providers it may help someone else avoid open
heart surgery and a potentially worse outcome than my wife. She is home and recovering well.

[edahle]

I just came from the hospital where my 50yr old wife was admitted after a heart catheterization procedure that diagnosed two occluded arteries to her heart. Both of the doctors were extremely surprised at this diagnosis primarily because the procedure found no other signs of heart disease in any of the other blood vessels in her heart. She also has no other risks factors for this type of heart condition. I asked both doctors if there was any possibility that this could have been associated with either an asymptomatic case of Covid, or from the Vaccine. Both doctors said they did not see any connection. They were aware of other heart related issues but not this type. My wife is an ICU nurse. She was never diagnosed with Covid but she spent the last year treating Covid patients in the ICU. She received the second shot of the Moderna vaccine at the end of January. Her symptoms began in February with shortness of breath and elevated heart rate that were brought on by mild activity like walking from her car into work. The symptoms continued to increase in frequency and severity. In two days she will undergo triple bypass surgery to correct this condition. I would be interested if there are others out there with similar heart related issues. Any advice on how to advocate with the doctors to investigate deeper the possible connections to Covid or the Vaccine. Could the blood vessel tissue they plan to remove, be examined and yield some indication of a connection to Covid or the Vaccine? I also received both vaccines and had no adverse reaction afterwards. Two months later I still have no side effects. Given the complexity of medical issues there could certainly be other explanations but the surprise of two doctors who had never seen something like this seems to indicate an unusual source for this condition.