Brooke's Journey

In late 2021 Brooke found out that she had an aortic root aneurysm after experiencing some persistent upper back pain. Last year she had a follow up echocardiogram, and it showed that the aneurysm had increased in size. She had open heart surgery on April 4th, 2023 to fix the aneurysm and also had her aortic valve replaced with a mechanical valve.

The surgery went well and she got sent home after a week at Barnes with a new prescription blood thinner. Brooke started taking Coumadin which involves keeping your blood clotting at a certain level.

Besides being tired and sore, Brooke was feeling okay until April 16th when she started experiencing facial numbness.

She went to Sarah Bush ER and found out that her INR level was even lower than when she was discharged from Barnes. After spending a couple of days at SBL she was sent home with Lovenox injections & an increase in Coumadin.

On April 22nd Brooke’s heart rate was high even at rest and she was short of breath. She went back to SBL ER, and she was found to have a pericardial effusion so she was transferred back to Barnes.

The surgeon attempted to do a less invasive procedure to drain the fluid from around the heart but unfortunately because of her low INR, the blood had clotted too much to be able to safely remove through an incision.

Because of this, the team at Barnes had to open her chest back up to stop the bleed and remove the clots. They kept her chest open and packed overnight while she was on a ventilator. After repeat imaging showed that they got all of the clotting, a plastic surgeon was called in to do sternal plating. Brooke’s sternum was too weak to be wired back together like her first surgery.

She spent another 11 days at Barnes and has been doing a lot better since coming home this time.

After having 2 open heart surgeries and having her sternum reconstructed, Brooke’s recovery time off work is a lot longer than first expected. We appreciate all the help and support from friends and family so far and we’ve had a lot of people reach out to see if we had something set up for donations. It is not expected, but greatly appreciated!