First post!

Greetings!

As hinted in the Asteria Worklog it is funny how things in life can go completely sideways when you least expect it. I’m currently on my third week of recovery after a second open heart surgery in 14 months and thankfully doing very well, which is why I’m in a position to even write this blog entry.

But let’s start from the beginning, around mid May 2025. Out of the blue I suddenly started to get out of breath walking up the stairs and soon after developed quite the cough. If I didn’t know better I would have said I either suffered from a chest infection or COVID. With none of the other COVID symptoms I put it down as a chest infection and continued as normal. One thing that also started at this time that I didn’t think about was that I permanently could hear my heartbeat in the ears.

For the late May bank holiday weekend the wife and I were heading down to London for a nice long weekend. While having the morning shower before going to the train I suddenly noticed that the heartbeat sound in my ears had changed. It suddenly sounded boom boom pssh, not good. Well we decided to continue down to the London anyway. While on the train I had a quick check with Dr Google about this new sound in my ear and the answer was; possible leaky heart valve. Great, minor tweak to the plans required.

After we checked in to the Tower Hotel we asked the concierge where the the nearest hospital with a walk in clinic was, we were pointed to Guy’s Hospital and another taxi journey later we were there. While filling out the health questionnare I was coughing enough to be told to but on a face mask in case of COVID. Once the form was handed in to the reception I was the next person out of the 14 or so waiting to get called in. One ECG and a discussion with the on-site GP later it was decided that an ambulance ride across town to St Thomas Hospital was required.

Once in A&E at St Thomas Hospital they did various checks and after 2h discharged me with a note that I had suspect heart murmurs and uneven heartbeat and should follow up with my GP. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

We did indeed make the most of the weekend but used taxis to go anywhere and if I tried the dumb idea of walking a block or two I suffered from being utterly out of breath. On the train journey back we did as always, ending up with seats on the wrong end of the train, so when we got back to Peterborough we were as far away from the taxi rank as possible. While walking to the taxis, halfway there I suddenly had lactic acid in the legs, belly and neck. Great. Thankfully sitting down for a few minutes resolved it and we got back home.

The following two days I contacted my private health insurance and worked hard to find an available Cardiologist. Eventually I got one booked in for June 12th.

Fast forward and we are on June 10th. While watching the evening news on the TV I suddenly got massive palpitations where I could feel every chest and back muscle trying to help the heart pump. Let’s just say we went to A&E then and there. After spending all night in the waiting room as is expected I finally got to see a doctor at 6am and was given a bed and put on a heart monitor.

Later in the day two physiologists came and had a chat with me. “So you are the interesting one?” Apparently so, they wanted to listen to my heart and sounded very excited.

In the afternoon I finally got to see a cardiologist and I got rolled away to have an Echocardiogram (Echo). It was quite funny when we got into the room. It was a nurse there, then me, the wife and the cardiologist. Then a second cardiologist turned up, and a third. Well the third was told to f off pretty much. So in the end we had two cardiologists scan my heart and the discussion I picked up between them didn’t sound good. This is broken, oh and that is broken as is that…

What I suffered from turned out to be three leaky heart valves; Aortic, Mitral and Tricore, of which the Mitral valve had a severe leakage, hence the out of breath from doing pretty much nothing at all.

After that I got admitted to the cardiac ward, for what turned out to be nearly TWO MONTHS, including my birthday. At least some of the nurses sang Happy Birthday so that was nice. I was shifted between rooms five times, because why not. This time in general was a very good test of my mental health, especially when I ended up in a shared room with other patients and just after I got to know one them after a few days he died from a heart attack!

Other fun and games was the our shared room also caught COVID the same week as it turned out I was scheduled to be sent over to Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge for the surgery. Well that added another three weeks of delays. Eventually on Wednesday July 30th and the same week the guy had died from the heart attack I found out from the nurses that they had been tasked to book me a transport to Papworth. I was crying from happiness. On August third I was rolled out to a transport and I got to see a tree for the first time in two months. I had literally been living in a bunker staring at a white wall outside the windows. I loved every second of the 1h journey, window open just smelling nature going past.

Once in Papworth it was a case of getting settled and on the Monday the day after it was very busy, I got to speak to the surgery nurses, the surgeon and the aneastesesist. The highlight was the aneastesesist, he looked like a spitting image of the drug dealer in Breaking Bad. I knew I was in good hands.

On the morning of August 5th I was finally rolled into the theatre and laid down on the surgical table. The prepwork was quite interesting, on my left side I had someone cut open the artery in my arm to fit a blood pressure sensor, on my right a cannula was fitted in my other wrist and then Mr Breaking Bad fitted a set of metal sensors on my forehead. That was to detect brain activity, good luck with that, since when you are on a heart/lung machine you have no pusle to see if you are alive. Well shortly after that I was asleep.

Some 17h later (1.30am) I woke up in ICU/advanced recovery feeling great, most likely because I was high as a kite on Morphine. What a scene, tubes and wires absolutely everywhere. I now had a mechanical Aortic valve fitted while the Mitral and Tricore valves had been repaired.

I had a very good breakfast in the morning and was rolled back to my room.

Over the next eight days I slowly had lines, wires and tubes removed. Some less disgusting than others. Two notable ones were first one set of wires that were used for an external pacemaker. They were pretty stuck. The first nurse tried twice and then had to call for a senior nurse to give it a go as it turns out only the senior ones are allowed to pull it hard. Well she got there, she got the wire wrapped several laps around here hand the regular process started. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, hold, YANK! Well she got it out and I was probably white as a sheet in my face. Her comment; that was a good one, not the best, but a good one.

Next fun one was the third and final drain pipe, it wasn’t very thick, probably a quarter of an inch or so. But what made that one fun was that it was a lot of pipe inside me, about two feet of it. When it was pulled out it felt like my intestines were coming with it. Another white face event.

A day or two later on August 13th I was finally discharged from hospital and could go home, which felt amazing after all this time.

Recovery went fine, my biggest issue was a sore back from the 7.5h surgery forcing the ribcage apart and as a result the ribs get a good bruising where they are attached to the spine. It took 2 months for the back to heal. I finally returned to work after a whopping 4 months off.

We went on a nice holiday the last week in November and at that point I could easily walk 6 miles. Well a week after we got back I was doing a short walk to the post office and there is a small incline, I got out of breath once again. Crap!

From then on my health once again deteriorated on a near weekly basis. End of December I had a 7 day ECG that showed irregular heartbeat, in early February I had another Echo via NHS.

Fast forward to April and I had still not heard back from NHS about the Echo result. So once again I went down the private route, got a cardiologist booked for May 7th. A few days prior to that NHS suddenly contacted me saying I had a cardiologist appointment on the 6th. Same cardiologist!

Well that was a blessing in disguise because when I saw him the first day he had not been given any details why I was seeing him, and he couldn’t find any records of the Echo outcome. Well the good thing was that he had 24h to find all records before the second session.

Fast forward another 8 weeks and he had arranged a session for me to see the same surgeon that fixed me the first time as he also does private work. It was a very good session and he had the outcome from the February Echo and it wasn’t showing any severe leakage, the gate for any surgery. But as the discussion progressed and I pointed out I was getting worse by the week and the scan was literally 6 months old he popped out of the room, found someone that could do a fresh Echo then and there. At the end of the Echo the surgeon came in and checked how it was looking and surprise, surprise, the tricore valve was indeed having a severe leakage. The gateway to surgery was open.

Fast forward again and I finally had my second open heart surgery on October 7th. This time a bit more scary than the first. It turns out once you had an open heart surgery the scar tissue on the heart and arteries will stick to the scar tissue on the inside of the ribcage. So in essence, step one after cutting the rib cage is to literally cut away the heart from the ribcage itself. Jikes! And as an extra bonus to be on the safe side before they open the body they need to insert a few pipes in the arteries in the groin and neck, just in case the heart dislodging results in a punctured heart so they quickly can get a heart/lung machine going. Double Jikes!

Well the surgery went well even though Mr Breaking Bad wasn’t involved this time. Once again I woke up after some 16-17h feeling great. This time I had five drain pipes and three sets of lines in my neck, good luck trying to turn your head with any of them fitted. The picture at the top of the blog was when I only had one set of lines left in the neck a day or two after surgery. All tube and wire removals were smooth, even though I had more of them, they were all short and nothing was stuck this time. I was discharged and got home after a week in hospital. This time it seems my poor back survived without too much brusing.

I have now been back home for two weeks and recovery is going well but the road back to normal is very long still.

I’m officially the Bionic Man now, with mechanical Aortic and Mital valves and an artificial bovine tricore valve.

And that’s it, felt good to get it all written down at last.