Born December 7, 1927 in Sacramento, California where I still reside. Married with 5 children, 9 grandchildren. Former professional musician (big band era) drummer, singer. Real Estate Broker & Developer 45+ years. Interests & activities include tennis & music---participant in Senior Olympic Tennis Tournament & publicly sing on occasion (Jazz Festival & fund raisers)
Matt's Stent-Graft procedure began about 1 p.m. Thursday June 25. This was being done at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto but being performed by the Stanford surgeons who have had a 100 percent success rate — that is until Matt came along!
After about 2 hours into the procedure the chief surgeon came to me in the waiting room and sadly informed me that they just couldn't complete the procedure. It seems that his arteries were just a bit too small to allow the device to reach the aorta. It was terribly disappointing (to the doctors too) because after all we had waited so long to get this particular procedure done and it is what my husband wanted so badly in lieu of the conventional surgery. So at any rate, they proceeded to do the conventional surgery and it went well but the length of operating time was more than doubled because of the time spent with the Stent-Graft. And of course we could have had the conventional surgery done months ago in our home town--Oh well, such is life — at least it's over with and he no longer has that awful aneurysm!
He spent 2 days in ICU and everything seemed to be progressing nicely, he was taken out of ICU and we were scheduled to go home last Tuesday, when on Monday he began to have difficulty breathing and it was discovered his oxygen level was very low and he was put back in ICU where he was given respiratory therapy and another blood transfusion. After about 24 hours he recovered sufficiently from that setback and he was discharged last Thursday. (Apparently he hadn't been deep breathing and walking enough which caused a lung to collapse) So he ended up spending 8 days in the hospital.
Today (5 July 1998) is beginning his 3rd full day at home and he has really been feeling lousy — very nauseous and no interest in food — until this morning he feels a little better and had a bowl of cereal.
We would appreciate hearing from you regarding your recovery progress — how you're doing, how long it took, what to expect, etc. We were in such a mind gear to have the less invasive method that this has kind of "bowled" us over — something we weren't really prepared for.