Rick's Heart
Donation protected
This was written by Rick's wife Amanda:
How do you even begin something like this?
First: thank you for taking the time to read this, and considering us during what continues to be the trashfire year of the century. I’m writing on behalf of my husband, Rick. He is currently enduring Dilated Familial Cardiomyopathy – which basically means, he is in bilateral heart failure.
He is 34.
On Saturday, August 8, Rick texted me that he wasn’t feeling well – what he thought was pneumonia type symptoms. At the urging of myself, his mother, and sister, he went to Rittman/Wadsworth ER the next morning. Within 3 hours he was admitted to Barberton Hospital where they began to rule out Covid-19, pneumonia, or other issues surrounding his shortness of breath. They began to center on the heart and over the next few days we would hear larger words thrown around – myocarditis (a virus of the heart, which can be reversed when treated) and cardiomyopathy (a weakening of the heart’s ability to pump properly/a bad heart) and congestive heart failure (when the heart doesn’t pump properly, fluid builds up around the heart and the lungs).
Dr. Mike at Barberton said that if Rick had not come in for treatment when he had, he would have been dead within the next few weeks. His heart has been like this for some time (who knows how long?) with an elevated heart rate (called sinus tachycardia), which puts further strain on the heart muscle. Ever hear of athletes that suddenly keel over and pass away? Same thing here. They performed a left heart catheterization to identify Rick’s ejection fraction (EF) which measures how well the heart pumps. A normal EF is anywhere from 55-65%.
Rick’s EF is currently sitting at 10-15%; it is a miracle that his body compensated for that long.
Quickly, Barberton Hospital let us know they could no longer help us and were transferring Rick to Akron City Hopsital for further testing and treatment. A smooth transfer by ambulance to Akron City and Dr. Constantini and Dr. Orasanu took the lead on Rick’s care. He was set on 5 West, a floor usually reserved for cardiomyopathies in individuals with drug/alcohol addictions. The 6 lead doctors of cardiology and EP tried to bring Rick’s heart rate down with different oral medications which were not successful. Rick endured an episode in which his blood pressure and heart rate dropped too quickly here.
Time stops when you’re at the foot of your husband’s hospital bed, slapping his legs and trying to keep him awake as a team of 6 nurses, a rapid and the Doctor are all working around his almost unresponsive body. Like something out of Grey’s Anatomy. To see him turn white. To see him turn a bit blue.
Thankfully, they were able to work quickly and got him re-stabilized. They wanted to perform a right heart cath to see the numbers on the other side the next morning. They found that his right number was only at 17%, which puts him in the category of bilateral heart failure and moved him immediately to the Heart and Lung ICU.
After the transfer to ICU Rick experienced our second major scare of this ordeal – they could not get any sort of reading on his blood pressure and needed to install an A line, which places something directly in his body to measure blood pressure in real time. This was done on the fly with 10 doctors/residents/fellows in the room and I….well. I did not handle it well, to say the least. Standing yet again at the foot of his bed, asking him questions to keep him coherent and with us and being handed a hairnet, watching this team of highly skilled and trained humans work on him until I was asked to leave the room. It’s like an out-of-body experience, ya know? Like watching a movie….total IMAX immersion of the worst nightmare that you only read about, or hear about.
A-line went in fine, and I was able to return to the room after consulting with the Doctors, who felt that a transfer to Cleveland Clinic Main Campus was needed if they could not get him stabilized. The next 24 hours were stable, and Rick was started on IV medications to help his heart pump more strongly while widening his veins for oxygen and blood to reach his organs.
While he was stable we decided to move forward with the transfer (I’d rather him at CC Main if anything happened again suddenly, and if surgery was needed he’d have to go there anyway). Critical Care Ambulance stepped in, and Rick was transferred to CC that next evening. Rick had yet another Covid test (I think this is 4 or 5 now), and was moved into the CC Critical Heart Failure ICU where he still is, and will be, until we can determine what the next steps for his care are.
Like Eleanor Shellstrop in ‘The Good Place’ says, “Holy forking shirt.”
Dilated Familial Cardiomyopathy is his diagnosis which essentially means a) his heart is enlarged, b) he has poor family history of cardiomyopathy and he inherited poor genes, and c) he will one day need a heart transplant.
We are grateful to have medical insurance right now through his work but Rick will need to begin FMLA, long term disability and we are uncertain when he will be able to return to work. I do have a full time job and we are grateful for our work families who are trying to help us in any way they can. We are cashing in all of our PTO in these last two weeks; Rick is exhausting his sick leave. I will have to return to work but we relied on Rick’s income as our main income for the home and used mine for retirement savings.
We try to be financially responsible but looking forward to the time ahead and the astronomical medical bills we will be facing, as well as the potential of reduced income…we are scared. An ER, three hospitals, multiple daily test and procedures….sometimes re-doing the same procedures over and over and over as they moved him to different places….
We know and understand that this time has put so many out of work due to Coronavirus. We do not ask this lightly; we understand that any money from other households to ours is a sacrifice.
Any donations received will not be abused in any way. It will go towards medical bills and our mortgage, as well as other household bills. We will be good stewards with any gifts given.
I’ve given the briefest synopsis, and further daily updates can be read on my (Amanda’s) Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/resplendentstarlet
This is….surreal. It doesn’t feel like we are living our lives. How does this happen at 34? How does this happen at all? We are placing ourselves at the mercy of God, medical science, and humbly asking for anything you might spare so that we can navigate this time ahead. I pray every night for God to heal Rick’s heart, to keep him strong, to help him hold out until….until what? A heart is available? It seems cruel to pray for someone to die so that Rick can live. And yet, life is cruel because here we are.
We thank you, deeply, for considering our cause. We are just heartbroken over this broken and unfixable situation – but we have a big and mighty God and we believe in the power of prayer, and asking Him for a miracle.
How do you even begin something like this?
First: thank you for taking the time to read this, and considering us during what continues to be the trashfire year of the century. I’m writing on behalf of my husband, Rick. He is currently enduring Dilated Familial Cardiomyopathy – which basically means, he is in bilateral heart failure.
He is 34.
On Saturday, August 8, Rick texted me that he wasn’t feeling well – what he thought was pneumonia type symptoms. At the urging of myself, his mother, and sister, he went to Rittman/Wadsworth ER the next morning. Within 3 hours he was admitted to Barberton Hospital where they began to rule out Covid-19, pneumonia, or other issues surrounding his shortness of breath. They began to center on the heart and over the next few days we would hear larger words thrown around – myocarditis (a virus of the heart, which can be reversed when treated) and cardiomyopathy (a weakening of the heart’s ability to pump properly/a bad heart) and congestive heart failure (when the heart doesn’t pump properly, fluid builds up around the heart and the lungs).
Dr. Mike at Barberton said that if Rick had not come in for treatment when he had, he would have been dead within the next few weeks. His heart has been like this for some time (who knows how long?) with an elevated heart rate (called sinus tachycardia), which puts further strain on the heart muscle. Ever hear of athletes that suddenly keel over and pass away? Same thing here. They performed a left heart catheterization to identify Rick’s ejection fraction (EF) which measures how well the heart pumps. A normal EF is anywhere from 55-65%.
Rick’s EF is currently sitting at 10-15%; it is a miracle that his body compensated for that long.
Quickly, Barberton Hospital let us know they could no longer help us and were transferring Rick to Akron City Hopsital for further testing and treatment. A smooth transfer by ambulance to Akron City and Dr. Constantini and Dr. Orasanu took the lead on Rick’s care. He was set on 5 West, a floor usually reserved for cardiomyopathies in individuals with drug/alcohol addictions. The 6 lead doctors of cardiology and EP tried to bring Rick’s heart rate down with different oral medications which were not successful. Rick endured an episode in which his blood pressure and heart rate dropped too quickly here.
Time stops when you’re at the foot of your husband’s hospital bed, slapping his legs and trying to keep him awake as a team of 6 nurses, a rapid and the Doctor are all working around his almost unresponsive body. Like something out of Grey’s Anatomy. To see him turn white. To see him turn a bit blue.
Thankfully, they were able to work quickly and got him re-stabilized. They wanted to perform a right heart cath to see the numbers on the other side the next morning. They found that his right number was only at 17%, which puts him in the category of bilateral heart failure and moved him immediately to the Heart and Lung ICU.
After the transfer to ICU Rick experienced our second major scare of this ordeal – they could not get any sort of reading on his blood pressure and needed to install an A line, which places something directly in his body to measure blood pressure in real time. This was done on the fly with 10 doctors/residents/fellows in the room and I….well. I did not handle it well, to say the least. Standing yet again at the foot of his bed, asking him questions to keep him coherent and with us and being handed a hairnet, watching this team of highly skilled and trained humans work on him until I was asked to leave the room. It’s like an out-of-body experience, ya know? Like watching a movie….total IMAX immersion of the worst nightmare that you only read about, or hear about.
A-line went in fine, and I was able to return to the room after consulting with the Doctors, who felt that a transfer to Cleveland Clinic Main Campus was needed if they could not get him stabilized. The next 24 hours were stable, and Rick was started on IV medications to help his heart pump more strongly while widening his veins for oxygen and blood to reach his organs.
While he was stable we decided to move forward with the transfer (I’d rather him at CC Main if anything happened again suddenly, and if surgery was needed he’d have to go there anyway). Critical Care Ambulance stepped in, and Rick was transferred to CC that next evening. Rick had yet another Covid test (I think this is 4 or 5 now), and was moved into the CC Critical Heart Failure ICU where he still is, and will be, until we can determine what the next steps for his care are.
Like Eleanor Shellstrop in ‘The Good Place’ says, “Holy forking shirt.”
Dilated Familial Cardiomyopathy is his diagnosis which essentially means a) his heart is enlarged, b) he has poor family history of cardiomyopathy and he inherited poor genes, and c) he will one day need a heart transplant.
We are grateful to have medical insurance right now through his work but Rick will need to begin FMLA, long term disability and we are uncertain when he will be able to return to work. I do have a full time job and we are grateful for our work families who are trying to help us in any way they can. We are cashing in all of our PTO in these last two weeks; Rick is exhausting his sick leave. I will have to return to work but we relied on Rick’s income as our main income for the home and used mine for retirement savings.
We try to be financially responsible but looking forward to the time ahead and the astronomical medical bills we will be facing, as well as the potential of reduced income…we are scared. An ER, three hospitals, multiple daily test and procedures….sometimes re-doing the same procedures over and over and over as they moved him to different places….
We know and understand that this time has put so many out of work due to Coronavirus. We do not ask this lightly; we understand that any money from other households to ours is a sacrifice.
Any donations received will not be abused in any way. It will go towards medical bills and our mortgage, as well as other household bills. We will be good stewards with any gifts given.
I’ve given the briefest synopsis, and further daily updates can be read on my (Amanda’s) Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/resplendentstarlet
This is….surreal. It doesn’t feel like we are living our lives. How does this happen at 34? How does this happen at all? We are placing ourselves at the mercy of God, medical science, and humbly asking for anything you might spare so that we can navigate this time ahead. I pray every night for God to heal Rick’s heart, to keep him strong, to help him hold out until….until what? A heart is available? It seems cruel to pray for someone to die so that Rick can live. And yet, life is cruel because here we are.
We thank you, deeply, for considering our cause. We are just heartbroken over this broken and unfixable situation – but we have a big and mighty God and we believe in the power of prayer, and asking Him for a miracle.
Organizer and beneficiary
Jennica Anderson
Organizer
Rittman, OH
Amanda Zisk
Beneficiary
