I'm a 41 year old male who had an ascending aortic aneurysm burst on November 1, 2000. The surgeon said I had a 2½ inch rip in my aorta and I barely survived. I have read most of the stories on this website and consider myself lucky to have had such a good recovery. This whole incident seems so surreal to me because I have never been sick like this in my life. There was no warning when this happened, and the next thing I know I'm fighting for my life.
It was the day after my moms funeral and I was loading the car with luggage when I felt a pop in my chest and it suddenly felt like someone was standing on my chest. I knew it was bad and I rushed into the house and told my wife something was wrong. Thank God my wife is a pre-nursing student and she told me to sit down and within a few seconds I collapsed and she yelled to my brother to call 911. She got me on the floor and elevated my legs and kept me alive until paramedics arrived 4 minutes later.
I've never felt a cold sweat so bad in my life and the paramedics had a hard time getting a pulse. I regained consciousness at some point when the paramedics were working on me. I got to the hospital about 10 minutes later and they determined fairly quickly after chest X-rays and an echocardiogram that I had massive bleeding in my chest. Unfortunatly it was a wednesday at 9:30 in the morning and all the surgery suites were busy and so I was wisked up to ICU to wait for an opening. Luckily my blood was being contained in my heart sack, but this was also putting outside pressure on my heart. Another thing I had going for me is that I was transported to Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene, Oregon which I've been told is one of the top 100 heart centers in the United States. I waited an hour before there was an opening in surgery.
My first surgery lasted 6 hours where they replaced my aortic valve and fixed my aorta with a dacron/felt tubing. I went back in 3 hours later and had another 3 hour surgery because I was leaking too much into my chest. I woke up 20 minutes after my first surgery because I wanted to see if I was still alive or not, once I knew I was still here I relaxed. My ventilator tube was taken out in 8 hours and I stayed in ICU for 2 days until they transferred me to the cardiac wing. I stayed a total of 1 week in the hospital before I was discharged.
My recovery has been good except for one episode of atrial fibrillation that lasted 8 hours and scared the living daylights out of me. I returned to work as a sawfiler on Dec. 1st on a light duty basis and my strength has been returning slowly. Some of my apprehension about all this new stuff in my chest and dealing with this crisis is starting to go away now. There is so many what-ifs about what happened to me I can only thank God that I'm still alive.
Good luck to all you survivors out there and may God be with you!