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Went down to Atlanta recently for a valve job.
Not on my 20-year-old F150 pickup but on me. At the Marcus Heart Valve Center in the old Buckhead section of Hotlanta.
Have a love-hate relationship with Atlanta, especially its horrible traffic.
Have seen it grow, almost explode, on Georgia and especially north Georgia. Now personally consider Blue Ridge as northern rim of Metro.
Heart doctors from Atlanta
My late wife, Deanie, had a little heart adventure about the year 2000, featuring Atlanta doctors. We learned quickly that many of them have cabins in these mountains and don’t mind at all practicing medical specialties in Blairsville and Hiwassee and long weekends here.
She introduced me to her doctor, and I swear he shook my hand with both of his, checking my pulse during the greeting.
He and his fellow workers put two stents near her heart, and she never had any trouble at all, follow-ups and checkups done here, never went back to Atlanta.
So couple of years ago, I started going to Piedmont Heart, located on the top floor of the new office building at Union General at Blairsville. Met Murphy folks in the waiting room nearly every time. Given a sonogram by technician related to a longtime friend at Mercier’s Orchard. Down home.
Valve trouble at main ‘pump’
The Piedmont medical folks showed me heart diagrams and patiently describe the scene for me. Also read up on my own on the Web.
Your heart sits in about the middle of your chest, behind a protective rib cage of bones. In the middle, more or less, of the heart is a critical valve. It’s supposed to keep your blood flowing in a forward direction on each beat. Acting like what your country boy would call a “check valve,” forcing the blood stream always forward.
But mine, and lots of other people, does not seal well and lets some blood dribble backward from the valve on each stroke. Which lessens the stream.
An artificial new valve, with some parts from a cow, would go into my 84-year- old heart. On a preliminary visit to Atlanta, they showed me and our children a sample. I peeked into the end of the device and saw what I perceived to me the cow parts, white cartilage.
We were told that all cows in North America have too much fat in them. So the donor cows are kept in a separate herd on a remote ranch in New Zealand.
Showtime in the operating room
They want you ready real early in the morning so we just went down the day before and stayed in a room they offered.
The great thing about this valve replacement is they don’t cut you at all. Merely make a hole in a big artery at your groin and poke it up to your heart, where it will be deployed inside the old, failing one.
They did nine in all that day, mine was the last. Asleep the whole time from good drug, and it was over.
You spend just one night in Piedmont Hospital and next day come home.
Some patients have a heart condition that forces installation of a pacemaker on them during the operation. A heart monitor was attached to me for about a month, to see if I will eventually have to get a pacemaker. Which remains to be seen.
Nighttime in a big-city hospital
Even just spending one night in the hospital was a big deal for me. First there was the door.
“Hey,” I told the nurses. “My room door doesn’t have a lock on it. I’m gonna put
a chair braced under the knob …”
This is a hospital, they said, not a motel. We have security here with guns and everything that control who comes into the building. We have to have access to you all night, taking vital signs, drawing blood, etc., etc.
“And don’t put no chairs against the door,” they said. “You will end up killing one of us in the dark.”
Otherwise they were good and friendly all the time. Laughed at all my stories.
“Look at that orange stain on my legs,” I told one of them. “I’m the same color as Donald Trump …”
She nearly fell down in the floor laughing. Recovered enough to tell me that the orange was from a disinfectant the operating room staff splashed all over my groin area to kill possible germs and bacteria on the skin.
It’s good to be home …
Wally Avett first wrote for the Cherokee Scout as editor in 1969. His books are available as signed copies at the Scout office in downtown Murphy. Call him at 828-837-5531 or email wallyavett@gmail.com.