Brother Gerry

Brother Gerry's Heart Operation - Monday 14 November, 2005 & following .....

My brother Gerry was scheduled to have a replacement aortic valve inserted last Friday, 11th November This is the text of an email sent to family & friends on the 7th.

Most Family will know what follows - and many other friends who do not know my brother Gerry personally will be interested in a general, kindly way

He gets filleted this coming Friday, at the Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast, chest opened up to replace a malfunctioning aortic valve!

Poor lad - I know what he is about to undergo, for I had exactly the same op three and a half years ago. It must be a family weakness, though in his case it's a bit more complicated in that there is an 80% blockage of one artery, close to the heart, so he is going to have a bit more pain as a vein is removed from a leg to make this additional repair.

So say a wee prayer that he comes through the operation OK. He says that it is 100% successful these days. I disagree! It's 99.5% favourable odds. Marvelous what can be done though, and in my experience the RVH is a centre of excellence - great staff at all levels in excellent, custom built surroundings.

I would not be alive but for their expertise, and although I believe profoundly in the glory of Heaven, it's great to get a few added years.

He's in Ward 5C, RVH, Belfast, for those who wish to send a card - and you can even phone him at his bedside if you wish: ~~07046305244.~~ But I don't recommend this, as the costs are phenomenal! 49p a minute! It's scandalous.
I have been making waves on local Ulster radio - complaining about this and the fact that patients must pay £3.50 per day to watch TV (via a little 4" screen hung over the bed). In their planning the RVH handed over the contract to an outside company which is now milking the system. Roll on the days when we get our Northern Ireland Assembly back and local people will be able to exert pressure on a home-brewed Minister of Health to alter the system. The present Ministers from England & Scotland (Westminster MPs) are just not answerable, not open to pressure.

THEN: at 7 a.m. the op was cancelled, leaving poor Gerry with body shaven and system chock full of preparatory drugs.
    An emergency had risen and a surgeon and an anesthetist had worked through the night to repair the heart of a child. The anesthetist was too exhausted to proceed with Gerry's op, which is expected to take four hours. So my dear brother must now wait until Wednesday.
    He understands the delay but he is really beginning to be a tiny wee bit pissed off, lying around in bed with an alarm system attached to his chest that will warn of heart failure. Nothing much he can do about it - and he now understands from the surgeon that the chances of his operation being a success is 85%. This is better than the 35% success estimate given to the chap in the bed opposite him!
    I suppose it is better than being 100% dead. Twenty years ago he would have departed to the next world within the next six months - and I would already have been there three years ago.

Well! That's it. Was up seeing Gerry yesterday in Intensive Care - but it was touch and go!
This is the story::
Following the set-back of having his operation cancelled on Friday 11th Gerry was wheeled into the operating theatre on the morning of Wednesday 16th - according to report just before 11am.
The procedure - to recreate the aortic valve (which pumps blood through the body) and perform a bypass round one blocked artery - was timed to take four hours or so. In the event it was not until around 5.30pm that he was taken out of the theatre to ICU, having taken up 6 hours work by the surgeon and anesthetist.   Those guys certainly earn their money - six, seven eight or ten hours on their feet, constantly concentrating on precise and life-preserving procedures.
    The trouble, as far as Gerry was concerned, was an unstoppable and untraceable blood flow. Eventually the surgeon closed his chest and he was brought into IC, but the surgeon informed sister-in-law Sally that he would be hanging around for a few hours just to make sure that everything was in order.
    A wise precaution, for it turned out that Gerry started to bleed again, and had to be taken back into the operating theatre, where his chest was opened again to search for the source of the trouble. There was no bleeding from either the aortic valve or the bypass, and it was not clear from where the blood was coming - perhaps from some small veins cut in the chest incision. Eventually, with blood flow reduced and some special clamps in the chest my poor brother was returned to intensive care, and the word that Sally got was that he was 'critical'. No need to explain this further - he could die. Not the word that anyone wished to hear. Then after a few hours - eight or ten - it was changed to 'critical but stable', and the tension was partly reduced.
    Sally and I, along with Sally's sister Clare, went up to the RVH on Saturday. I was greatly perturbed to see Gerry on a ventilator, and even more alarmed when I saw a spurt of blood shoot into the air from the top of his chest incision, caused I think when one of the nurses pumped fluid from his chest cavity. Really alarming - looked like the spouting of a small whale, a miniature red fountain.
    Eventually we left. Not too happy. And on Sunday Sally went to the hospital on her own, reporting back that he was stirring restlessly, without any great change - though by this time the term 'critical' had been dropped.
    And then yesterday I went up on my own (relieving Sally for a few hours from the massive pressure she has been under), and was relieved to find that the ventilator had been removed. My dear brother was breathing on his own! Great stuff!
    He was looking more at peace, tranquil, as opposed to the restless stirring that I had first witnessed. He really looked quite well, body still tanned from work in the garden during our beautiful summer.
    I talked to him, even though his eyes were closed and he looked as if he was asleep. Still heavily monitored it appears that he was just coming out of a timed period of drug administration, and he began to make sounds, trying to talk. Towards the end of my visit I said to him, "Gerry, I'm glad to see you looking so well. You nearly left us, but now I look forward to seeing you at home drinking a cuppa tea - or even a wee Hennessey! I'm going home now to have a wee Hennessey myself."
    And then he burbled through his oxygen mask, just clear enough for me to understand, "I hope you enjoy it!"
    O Halleluiah! How glad I was to hear him speak. Marvelous. My brother returned to us.
    And just then I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find Sally's niece there - Orla, her brother's daughter, a nurse in the hospital, just dropped in during a meal break to say hello to Gerry. She and Aveen McCraith, our young cousin, who is a therapist in the Royal, have been regular visitors to Gerry's bedside, as has Orla's husband (a medical consultant).
     My description of Gerry's operation and recovery may be a little too bloody for some - but they simply reflect a reality. Heart operations are regular events these days, but it's still a bloody process - naturally enough when a surgeon saws through your chest bone - but still well worth it, when one considers the other option, despite the pain, which in my case was considerable. (Nobody warns you about this!)
    My dear brother has survived his operation - God be praised - along with the marvelous surgical and nursing skills of those who work in the RVH.
Thank all of you, good people,

So much has been happening in my small life that I have not had the opportunity to record that Gerry came back home during December.
Over the past few weeks he has been recovering his strength and there is little doubt that he will be fully functioning by Easter time - back to gardening by the summer. Great! Another decade or two of valuable life ahead - as the good Lord wills. Whether we realise it or not we are all in His hands, as well as the hands of those whom He employs as surgeons!