Nick's Battle with Congestive Heart Failure

On May 15th my father, Nick, was rushed to the hospital after going to urgent care with severe stomach pain. We were told that it was most likely a simple diverticulitis case and would be an outpatient procedure once he received the procedure. After the doctors found that he had become severally dehydrated and had grown abscesses along with the formation of a hole on his colon they realized it was worse than they thought. After 9 nine days in the hospital he was discharged.

From there he began swelling during his last day in the hospital. We were told it wouldn’t stay and his swelling would reduce. All week he kept getting more and more swollen. We called the doctor and they said that it was just a reaction to one of the antibiotics he was on and that he would be fine and to just monitor it and to keep his follow appointment with his regular doctor. I took him to his follow up visit with his regular doctor on Friday May 31st where he was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance with congestive heart failure. If it wasn’t for the grace of God having my dad scheduled that appointment six months earlier, he would have had a heart attack that weekend.

We spent the whole first day in ER and from there he received a catheter, performed a balloon procedure to make sure there were no blockages in his heart, and performing internal electrolysis, along with being zapped to get his heart back in rhythm to get out of AFib but he also has bradycardia, meaning he has a resting heart rate below 60. His lowest in the hospital was a heart rate of 25. He had underwent these procedures successfully but they were never able to pinpoint a problem. They had to perform several CT scans and MRI’s and other tests, trying to find what is causing my dad to have congestive heart failure and be in bradycardia but to no avail. 

As of right now he is home but being monitored and needing to go back every few weeks to receive more tests to try and pinpoint a disease. On July 24th, my father went back to the doctors to visit with his cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist and we found out he is back in AFib. They do not want to shock his heart back in rhythm because they don’t want him to have that kind of stress as they are afraid that he will just go back into AFib within a few weeks.  Instead they want to try a medicine on him but that means he will be back in the hospital for three days over his birthday so they can monitor any side effects and one of the side effects could form kidney failure which is their biggest concern. Their other biggest concern is the fact that his heart rate is still below 50 ranging anywhere from 35-50 resting at most. When he was rushed back into the hospital, on May 31st, after his first stay with diverticulitis, his heart was functioning at 20%. When he was discharged on June 7th, his heart was functioning at 35%. Their hope is that during his next cardiac echo in September, that his heart has made more progress through rest and medication.

They want him to continue to rest and take his two heart medications along with his blood thinner and water pill in the hope that he can begin his long road to recovery back as there is still no time frame for when my dad will get better. The scariest part of this is that as our family and all my dads friends and coworkers can attest to, he had never shown any signs of this before and came at us all as such a shock. This shock had now changed our daily lives and had an impact that we never could have planned for. He will be without work, and we have no idea how long as they still need to figure out what is causing his congestive heart failure as they can’t seem to find any root cause, and in the mean time, financial stress is setting in for him and all of us as he is a workaholic and throughout his whole life worked and worked hard to be the supporter of our family and build himself to be the person he is today through his work. Being the workaholic he is, he is growing restless and very eager to go back to work as soon as he can. We are making this to help my dad alleviate a huge burden off of his shoulders to help our family afford his stay and not stress ourselves and him while he is out of work.

We ask first and foremost for any and all continued prayers through this battle. As anyone who knows my father can say, he is the last person that would want to ask for help. That is why I wanted to put this together for him. We appreciate any small donation and thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, and kindness throughout this journey.