Pity party...ignore if you're not in the mood

[DoYouKubuntu]

Thanks SC and ardvark.

She called from the pre-op area before they took her in this morning. She's in very good spirits, quite upbeat, and we agreed that we WILL talk later.

[DoYouKubuntu]

She's out of surgery! And in the recovery room. Her mom just called. They did not attempt to get out one of the leads--I THINK it's the deeply embedded one from 1984--but the pacemaker and the other leads are out. The pocket was filled with infection, so they're not putting new hardware in now. They're going to wait for the infection to clear, and keep her monitored to make sure she's doing okay without the pacemaker. HUGE, huge sigh of relief here...3000 miles away.

[SecretCode]

And another from 10,000 miles away!

[woodsmoke]

I glad to read that things went well.

woodsmoke

[ardvark71]

She's out of surgery! And in the recovery room. Her mom just called. They did not attempt to get out one of the leads--I THINK it's the deeply embedded one from 1984--but the pacemaker and the other leads are out. The pocket was filled with infection, so they're not putting new hardware in now. They're going to wait for the infection to clear, and keep her monitored to make sure she's doing okay without the pacemaker. HUGE, huge sigh of relief here...3000 miles away.

Yay, that's good to hear!! :-)

[Teunis]

Hi DYK, my thoughts are with you and those you care for.
It must be a coincidence that just after I had read your story the screen saver (carousel) kicked in with a rare picture of my 97 y/o Mother in Law during one of her hospital stays...

[DoYouKubuntu]

Thanks, everybody.

(And, Teunis, your avatar gets me every time! I start to swat at my screen to get the damn bug off of it. )

Just got off the phone with my friend. She's doing great. In some pain, of course, but otherwise fine. We also know more now than we did before--because she cannot have an MRI, they had to rely on other, less accurate pre-op imaging, and it turns out the lead that LOOKED to have poked through the artery actually had not. Somehow, it appeared that way on the transesophageal echocardiogram, but in reality had not gone through. At any rate, they only left in a fragment of the deeply embedded, 1984 lead, which poses no risks/problems in the future. The pacemaker area was very infected, but her temperature has gone down nicely since yesterday, and it's only been 24 hours, so I'm quite optimistic at this point.

Teunis, yes, it's an odd coincidence that the pic of your MIL in the hospital came up. Strange things do happen.

[GreyGeek]

Thanks, everybody.

(And, Teunis, your avatar gets me every time! I start to swat at my screen to get the damn bug off of it. )

Me too, DYK! I have enough floaters in my eyeballs but that ant stands out because of its movements and it looks identical to the plague of grease ants that are around here.

..... At any rate, they only left in a fragment of the deeply embedded, 1984 lead, which poses no risks/problems in the future. The pacemaker area was very infected, but her temperature has gone down nicely since yesterday, and it's only been 24 hours, so I'm quite optimistic at this point....

My wife had open heart surgery in 2007, and to stabilize her heart rhythm they installed a temporary pacemaker on the outside, with leads passing through her skin to her SA node. Before she left the hospital they removed the pacemaker and in the process the leads broke off inside and they chose not to do another surgery to remove them. They've been inside every since and she is doing great with that cow valve. I was concerned at the time and did some research. Of the 500,000 or so open heart surgeries done in the US each year, 8,700 of them result in pacemaker leads being left inside the patient. Of those 57 cases led to fatal complications. That was 0.6%. Now, it is down to 0.25%, extremely low odds indeed.

[DoYouKubuntu]

GG, I'm glad I'm not the only one that little gnat/ant/whatever it is gets every time!

So your wife still has the leads and she's doing well. That's great to hear. In my friend's case, they said that the small fragment they left behind has been completely encapsulated by tissue, so there's [virtually] no risk of it becoming infected in the future, nor will its presence pose any issues with blockage, blood flow, etc. They have her on telemetry now to make sure she's okay while they decide what type of pacemaker to put in, and when to do it. The longer they can wait, the better, as the infection will [hopefully] be gone by then.