It Takes Heart!

Gary and I, Fiji 2009

My husband, Gary, had not been feeling well for a number of weeks. Breathing had become more difficult and he had a never ending cough. He eventually made an appointment at the doctors. He returned with an antibiotic which he immediately began taking. ‘Fabulous’, we all thought, he’ll be back to normal in a day or two.
Well, a day or two turned into a week or two, during which time he had 4 more visits to the doctors, each time arriving home with a different lot of medication and a different diagnosis, none of which seemed to be improving his health. It was quite clear to us that he had become seriously ill at an alarming rate as he was now struggling to walk even a few steps, so on 23rd April we went to the hospital.
They gave Gary a chest x-ray, from here things moved very quickly and he was immediately admitted into the coronary care unit. At this point they thought he had previously had a heart attack which had caused his heart to enlarge to 1 ½ times its’ normal size.
The next morning (Saturday) they called the cardiologist in on his day off as Gary’s health had continued to deteriorate. One of the coronary care nurses later told us he knew Gary was having massive heart failure at that time. He was having intense waves of nausea and had gone quite yellow. They were also concerned about a blood clot in his leg.
The cardiologist did an echocardiogram and diagnosed cardiomyopathy. They are calling it idiopathic because they don’t know what has caused it. They suspect it may have been a virus which has attacked Gary’s heart. Gary was at his lowest at this point and along with his enlarged heart it also showed that his heart was working at just 9%.
There were a number of cardiac specialists and support staff in the room with us at this time and they seemed to be conferring in a foreign language. It was an overwhelming feeling, there were only a few words which we understood, one of them being ‘transplant’. Now that they knew what the problem was they could prescribe medication accordingly. The medication had to work as the only other option was a heart transplant.
Thankfully Gary’s response to the medication seemed to be good and this was confirmed on Sunday morning when the cardiologist did another echocardiogram. On Saturday night Gary had lost 8 kilograms in weight, it was all fluid his body had been retaining and which was congesting organs such as his liver. He kept the nurses busy that night emptying his bottle. Gary spent 7 days in the coronary care unit where he received exceptional care from skilled staff.
We have now learnt some of the ‘foreign language’ which we were so ignorant of before and know terms such as ‘ejection faction’ and medications such as warfarin, digoxin, carvedilol and enalapril are common place in our household. We have also become familiar with some of the protocols of this new culture such as regular trips to med lab and the cardiology suite.
Life for Gary has changed dramatically. He has always been active, he was a keen squash player and participated regularly in the ‘Round the Mountain relay’ and the ‘Round the Mountain Cycle challenge’. He played basketball for the first time earlier this year and has also co-coached our son’s rugby team for the past 4 years. He has had 2 months away from work, which had always been a huge part of his life. For now, these things have been put on hold.
We don’t know what the prognosis is for Gary, we are hoping for the best. We do know it will be a long road to recovery and are thankful every day for all that we have and for the wonders of modern medicine.
He does remind us regularly that he is superman so the sky’s the limit really!
The Heart Foundation carry out important work in the areas of research, education and rehabilitation which they consistently require funding for so I am asking you to sponsor me to run the Auckland marathon. By doing so you will be touching the hearts of many New Zealanders as all funds raised will go to the Heart Foundation.



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