Good news is that the Doc's husband is up, sitting up, doing some physical therapy and has responded well to the larger pump they put in.
He is now being evaluated for a heart transplant as the pump only lasts for 14 days I guess. It sounds like he is making progress but has long road ahead of him.
Dinner tonight with the Doc and a sleep over. My girls have games tomorrow morning and then tomorrow afternoon the Doc and I are heading out to her ranch to drink, grill out and shoot guns.
My oldest is out of town today on a choir trip and is currently in route via a Greyhound bus. They left at 5 am this morning and get back at 11 pm tonight. She was so jacked up last night that she only got 4 hours of sleep which meant I only got 4 hours as well. This is the first time she has been away from me or the X with this type of distance between. Needless to say she has been blowing up my phone all morning.
I bought her some fake air pods for the trip. You would have thought they were real. Good thing, as she already lost one on the bus...….SMH I told her to look around on the floor.
One of my lifelong best friends had one of those pumps (Impella) implanted when his heart failure suddenly worsened. He was in the hospital for about six weeks with it (yeah, I know they’re only supposed to use them for 14 days, but what are you gonna do, remove it and let them die? Take the risk of replacing it? ) Anyway, he survived on it long enough for a donor heart to become available (a miracle , really, as he’s African American and type O blood - hard to find a match). It’s now been a year and a half, he’s doing great, and has been able to enjoy his first grandchild who was born right before he went into the hospital.
WOW, that's awesome! That is what he has as well, I just couldn't remember the name
Right, I assume he will have that in until he dies or they find a donor. I also don't think he will be leaving the hospital either until he has a new heart or is dead.
The Doc is getting updates from his girlfriend and it sounds like he is knee deep in praying to god and reading the bible. I assume a near death experience will do a lot to a person when they realize how close they were to dying. Hopefully it will change him for the better as his son really loves his dad!
It’s an LVAD, a left ventricular assist device. It is the bridge to a heart transplant . He can very well go home with that! People are out in the community all the time with it. I hope everything turns out well.
Have fun shooting and drinking! My kind of weekend!
I think we may be confusing devices here. LVADs can go much longer than 14 days. in fact, here's some quick survival stats from one study:
LVAD implantation, survival at 30 days was 94%, at 1 year 78%, at 2 year 71%, and at 4 years 45%
Patients can live a somewhat normal life outside the hospital with battery backup as they wait for a transplant.
The Impella Heart Pump on the other hand is a more short-term bridge - that is more primary to pumping versus an "assist" to the heart with low injection fraction.
The FDA has approved use of Impella for 6 hours, but current data has revealed off-label use in patients for a variable duration, ranging from a few hours to an average of 12 days, with the longest recorded duration at 35 days in a single documented case.
Sadly, transplant is often the ultimate "fix" in these cases. On the plus side, if the deadly opioid epidemic has brought us anything good, with about 150 people dying everyday, there are more donors these days than ever before - and many are healthy as they are young overdose victims who stop breathing, become brain dead, but are resuscitated and kept on a vent until they can become a donor. (as long as they don't have Hep C, etc.)
Hopefully if his heart is permanently damaged a donor can be found quickly.
DonH Midwest Me 56 WAW-EXW 55 Met 11/95 / Married 5/00 Bomb 6/20/05 / She Filed on 6/2/06 / Divorced on 10/9/06 4 who'd qualify as GF since D & dated about 25 women since D
