Author Information
The Surgery
The Surgery
There is a story that took place in the operating room of my hospital long time ago. But before start talking about what happened there, we need to know all about a man and how he came to that hospital. In the hospital we had an ill man, his name was John, and he had a lot of health problems. He came to the hospital because he was eating a hamburger when, suddenly, he started to feel pain in his left arm. Then, he started having diaphoresis (a lot of sweating) until he couldn’t breathe as he normally did.
When his girlfriend noticed that he was having a heart attack, she immediately called 911 and asked for an ambulance. The ambulance that she asked for arrived very fast. In the ambulance, the paramedics administered one shot of nitroglycerine through his veins and maintained him stable while they headed to hospital. Unfortunately, when he arrived at the hospital, his heart was very damaged and in that condition he would die in a few hours.
At this point, all the family members were devastated because he needed a heart transplant, and they now had two huge problems. On one hand, they did not have the amount of money necessary for the operation and, on the other hand, they did not have any heart available to be transferred to him! When the doctor talked with the family, he touched his own hearth and told them that the operation would be free of charges, but unfortunately the heart was still missing. Days passed by and John began to get worse and worse, his heart getting weaker as time went by. One could barely hear his heartbeats. We decided to administer epinephrine and noradrenaline to improve his heart contractions but these effects would only hold out a limit time.
That night, he was extremely bad. In fact, if he didn’t receive medical attendance, he would die in less than three hours. Suddenly, we all heard the single thing that we waited so desperately to hear. The nurse shouted,
-
“WE HAVE A HEART!!!!!!!” “This man wants to be a donor because he had cancer and wants to save the people with his organs!“
All the family started to cry of happiness and the doctors went immediately to the operating room. John was really weak and all the doctors were afraid to the possibility that maybe he could not make it. The surgery started at 2:00 am, they started to cut all the big arteries. First, they cut the inferior vena cava, clamping it with special forceps. Then, they continued with the superior vena cava and clamped it again. At this point everything was easy, but now they had to perform the most complicated part of the surgery: the left side of the heart. In this side we have the oxygenated blood and a lot of pressure, so any disturbance on this part could worsen the situation and cause an immediate and deathly hemorrhage.
They decided to start with the pulmonary artery, which may be the easiest part of the left side of the heart, and they cut it and clamped it again. When they cut the last artery, which is the most important one of all and is also known as the aorta, John started to bleed and, therefore, he lost a lot of blood on a very short period of time. Fortunately, the doctor was ready and focused enough to react rapidly. He transferred the new heart in less than a minute and saved the patient.
Today, John and his family are still very grateful with all the health team that participated in saving his life. Besides, with this experience, John learned that taking care of your health and having physical activity in your everyday life is really important to avoid future problems and future complications in case you already have had a heart condition. This way, the doctors not only saved John’s life at the moment of the heart attack, but they also helped him learn a very important lesson that he now can apply in his life and can also influence in a positive way in his family members and their health.
