Monday, March 12, 2018

Heart Surgery in Houston


On March 1st, Lorrina and I traveled down to Houston to see Dr. Reardon at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas. As many of you know, this was a very exciting and nerve racking appointment for us. We were excited, as strange as that sounds, because this appointment was a good sign the Dr. Reardon would be willing to perform surgery to go after the tumor behind my heart. However, we had no guarantee that was the case. I had a cardiac MRI that morning that definitely would make the case for doing the surgery or not. Right now there is not really another good option to treat this tumor. We are unable to radiate it further due to its location. I have failed almost every chemotherapy option available, and there is currently not an open clinical trial that makes sense to try. If Dr. Reardon would have said no, we would be left searching for a treatment option for a tumor that is already obstructing my heart and major blood vessels. Thankfully, Dr. Reardon is willing to perform the surgery and go after this tumor! We were incredibly relieved to say the least! We will be heading down later this month for surgery on March 29th. We are so grateful to my Oncologist at Roswell Park, Dr. Grand'Maison, who sent us to Dr. Reardon because she new there was a chance he could help us. If it were not for her, we may have never known this surgery was possible. There is not a surgeon near us that would be willing to do this surgery or is capable of doing this surgery that we are aware of.

Dr. Reardon is very hopeful this surgery will be successful, but there is always a chance that things look different when he opens me up and visualizes the tumor. If the tumor is invading the bottom part of my heart (the ventricles) or my esophagus, this would make things more difficult and possibly not removable. The MRI doesn't appear to show this, but it is always possible the scan is not 100% accurate. If the tumor is invading the top part of my heart (the atrium), this can actually be removed and replaced with artificial valves and transplanted tissue. Either way, we are grateful he is willing to take a shot at going after this tumor that right now, we don't have another option for.


Houston Methodist: Cardiac Autotransplant with Michael Reardon, MD from Houston Methodist on Vimeo.
This video is of Dr. Reardon explaining this type of surgery and why he started doing these type of procedures. He really is an incredible surgeon and it is very inspiring how he took on these cases to give patient's who have few options a chance.


If you aren't grossed out by surgery, you can watch a surgery similar to the one I will be having. I know it is not for everyone, but there are also a lot of nurses and students who have been reading this blog and I like to include as much educational stuff as I can. This patient has a different type of sarcoma than mine and her tumor has grown into the heart. Mine does not appear to have done this. However, the premise of the surgery is the same. Remove the heart to get to the target tumor.


In the meantime, all other treatment will be on hold. No more chemotherapy and proton therapy until after I recover from this surgery. Both of those treatments can put me at risk for infection or bleeding leading up to the surgery. The benefits of going after this tumor outweigh the risks of not treating the other tumors in my right lung right now. At some point, we will need to decided what the best option is to further attack those tumors and if removing my right lung is the best option for that as well, but right now we are happy the proton therapy has shrunk the large tumor and that hopefully it will remain stable enough to get us past this surgery.

I will be in Houston for about a month for this surgery, longer or shorter based on how I recover. We are planning for a two week hospital stay and about 1-2 weeks just staying in Houston for recovery and to be close by before flying home. I will have a lot of family there for the surgery which will be great and we have already made arrangements for a place to stay and travel. Being in Houston will be the biggest challenge for this surgery. Having had lung surgery in New York City was tough, but this is a much different trip. Obviously we can just jump in the car and drive down or back home whenever we want. The biggest challenge has been trying to plan for the recovery and keeping a family member down there with me until I get home, without knowing exactly when that will be. Thankfully, we have a great support system and so many people willing to come down and willing to watch our daughter. We would truly be lost without all of that support.

It has been difficult to wrap my head around this surgery because of all of the planning that has come with it in a relatively short period of time. I am not really scared of the surgery itself in regards to the pain and recovery. I have been through 7 lung surgeries now and those are supposed to be more painful and harder to recover from. The fact that my heart will be stopped and taken out of my body is admittedly a tough thing to wrap my head around. I have all the faith in the world in this doctor and know I don't have another choice, but knowing a heart lung machine will be keeping me alive and that my heart will be stopped is strange. The realty is, I don't have a choice. I will go into the surgery with all of the positive thought I possibly can, and be ready to fight and recover when I wake up. If my athletics career has taught me anything, it is you can't control everything. My coaches always told me you can't control the weather, you can't control the officials, you can control how you prepare and how you react to what happens. I have control over how I spend my time leading up to the surgery, so I will try to be in the best physical and mental shape I can be the day of the surgery. I have control of getting my family there to be with me, and I have control of how I work to recover from the surgery. What happens when I don't have control will happen, and I can't worry about that. That's how I am approaching this and hopefully we will come out with one less tumor!

Thanks as always for reading and following along. I appreciate all of the help, messages, and support from everyone! We are so grateful to all of you! I will update at least one more time prior to surgery.

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