Support Nathan In His Emergency Open Heart Surgery Recovery

Born with a heart murmur, I knew from a young age that open heart surgery would be a necessity by the time I turned 15. While I knew it would be necessary again, what I did not expect was a surprise emergency surgery accompanied by a blood infection at 31.

At the beginning of September 2024, I began to feel ill. Typically, I am a hard-working and fun-loving individual, but over the following two months, I grew sicker and sicker. A lethargy kicked in that I had never known and doing a simple load of bedding laundry was an all-day, arduous task. After reaching out to both my cardiologist and my primary care physician to rule out any possibility of a flu or covid, my highly booked, UCLA cardiologist was able to squeeze me in just 2 days later. Typically, I do an echocardiogram before seeing my cardiologist, but this time the sequence was different. First, I did blood work, saw my doctor, then had an echo a couple of hours later. During my appointment, my doctor advised me that based on the blood work alone he was able to determine that I had a heart valve infection.

Later that afternoon, I admitted myself to the UCLA emergency room. Over the next two weeks, I was visited by infectious disease doctors and congenital cardiologists alike. Every day, I was on a regimen of various antibiotics to combat the infection among other medications. One week after my admission, on November 1st, they rolled me down to the operating room where my surgeon performed a Ross procedure and removed the vegetation caused by my infection.

A full 24 hours after being anesthetized, I woke up in the ICU with a freshly broken sternum - here we go again.

Thank God for nurses! Mere hours after waking up, once I was ready, my nurse assisted me in slowly walking around the unit to help with the recovery process. Before I knew it, just a couple of days later, I was walking around that unit 2 to 3 laps at a time. Apparently that meant I was ready to graduate from the ICU moving to a different unit and a quick few days later, I was discharged on November 7th.

Home sweet home, recovery was going smoothly with the care of my generous parents. 4 days later, my heart rate shot up to 170 BPM at rest, so back to the UCLA emergency room we went. Upon my arrival, a dozen or so nurses and medical staff came swarming to prepare me for any and all tests and procedures that were most likely to be completed to fix my AFIB.

It turned out that my hemoglobin was low, 5.5, and that was causing my heart rate to go into atrial fibrillation. During this hospital stay, the G.I. doctors and congenital cardiologist teams paired up. Once the echocardiogram on my heart showed that my heart was healthy and the irregular rhythm was not caused by any complication from my recent surgery, the colonoscopy prep fun could commence. Thankfully, I drank all of that nasty prep fluid for nothing because neither the endoscopy nor colonoscopy showed any signs of bleeding. Both doctor teams agreed that the stress of my recent surgery and infection took a toll on my body causing my hemoglobin to plummet resulting in the AFIB I was experiencing.

Finally, after 1 week in the hospital, I was discharged and returned home to Pasadena, CA, where I have remained for the rest of my recovery up to this point. A full recovery will take 6 months.

As I sit here writing all of this out, I am prohibited from working and unfortunately my family is that of humble means. Any and all donations, however big or small, are greatly welcomed and appreciated to help alleviate the stress and strain on my limited finances during this unforeseen medical emergency.

All of your donations will go directly to covering medical bills and lost wages during this difficult time.