Rick update

By now most of you have heard about Rick's heart problems. He originally had an anaphylactic reaction to an antibiotic (one in more than a million chance of that happening) which left his heart with scarring in 2000. They are calling the original episode an MI (heart attack). He was told that the damage was minimal and he was young enough to go on living without problems.

In 2006 he was working in Canada for extended periods of time. He slowly became short of breath and extremely fatigued. I took him into the doctor who totally misdiagnosed him. Rick kept telling him he felt pressure in his upper abdomen. The doctor sent him home on Zantac. He totally missed the information in the chart about the original MI. Almost a week later he felt no better. I took him to the doctor again who thought he had mono. I insisted that it was something more and asked him to do an EKG. Once he ran one he realized how wrong he was and Rick was taken directly to the ER. Later he was moved downtown GR to the heart center where we were told he had congestive heart failure (CHF) and a large blood clot in his heart.

He has tried his best to keep up but his heart is just not cooperating. Now after two hospitalizations in Nov. and Dec. of 2009 we are finally getting some answers. They have enrolled him in the heart failure clinic which specializes in heart failure, VAD's and transplant. We will be finding out more next week about their plan for his care. They will be deciding on when and where to put an LVAD in Rick while he is placed on the heart transplant list. You can read more and watch a video about the VAD here.