Hidden within the walls of the Western
Maryland Health System Regional Medical Center is a special team of highly
trained professionals who love their jobs. This is our own Cardiac Health Unit.
They have saved the lives of thousands of folks in our area and have been
recognized as developing one of the best Cardiac Health programs in the
country. In 2013, my family went through a scary time, but this group of
tremendous people made it so much better. We very well could have lost my
father. At the time he was working at North Branch Correctional Institution,
which is known for causing its employees a vast array of medical problems due
to the high stress work environment. Fortunately, my mother has been a nurse
for over 30 years and pushed my father to get a stress test after he came home
with chest pains one evening. It was that stress test that saved his life, well
many people were involved in saving his life, the point to be explained here, is
that it took a whole team of amazing people, not any one thing saved my father.
My father, brother, and myself were
all hunting together shortly before the Christmas of 2012 when my father
experienced some chest pains. At the time we didn’t think anything of it and
neither did he. It wasn’t until it happened again that my mother picked up on
the issue. My father came home from working second shift at the jail one
evening after having had a rough night with a former coworker. He complained of
chest pains and numbness in one arm, so my mother gave him baby aspirin and
took his blood pressure. Not being satisfied with her findings, she called and
scheduled a stress test for my father for 30th of January 2013.
During this stress test, my father actually passed for his age and weight
bracket, but it was his stubbornness that helped save his life. He asked them
to go a few steps further than his bracket, to someone 20 years younger and in
runner’s shape. After some convincing, they cranked him up and then they could
see what had happened to him twice before, once in the woods and once at work.
They then determined that they needed to do a catheterization, so that they
could physically see the problem.
On February 8th, 2013
the same date many years prior that my father’s father had his heart attack at
the very same age of 59 years, my father had his heart catheterization. They
determined that stents would not be possible, and that triple bypass surgery
would be needed. They gave him a few options; a drug regimen over the course of
6-8 months to see if any changes would occur or schedule him for the next available date for open heart
surgery. Now, my father has never had any kind of major surgery, everything
that he has experienced up to this point has been outpatient care, all done in
the same day, with minimal recovery. So naturally he had lots of questions and
concerns. He knew he had plenty of time saved up at work that he could go ahead
and take the next surgery date, but the decision was still his.
Fortunately for my father, my Uncle
David had just had this surgery the year prior and was given a full briefing of
the surgery before deciding when to go under the knife. David experienced chest
pains for roughly six months but didn’t take it seriously. On Saturday the 27th
of July 2012 around 5:30 PM he had the first of three mild heart attacks. By
8:45 PM he had a heart attack so severe that he agreed to go to the hospital
via ambulance. During the ambulance ride he was given three doses of
nitroglycerine spray and upon arrival at WMHS, he had a heart catheterization
with an attempt to install stents. However, his left internal, main was blocked
beyond 90% (“actually 96-97%”) so open-heart surgery was indefinite. The
following morning at 7:00 AM “they wheeled me into the operating room and
started” he said. “I don’t remember much until Sunday evening when they took
the breathing tube out of my throat. Uncle David became patient number 3269 of the
Cardiac Health Unit on that very day. He then spent the following six days in
Cardiac Intensive Care Until he was released to go home on the 2nd
of August 2012.
After speaking with my uncle several
times, and much deliberation from the whole family the date was set for my
father to have open heart surgery on March 7th, 2013. Dad became
patient number 3394 when he had three bypasses completed. The bypasses were to
fix three different blockages, one at 50-60%, another at 50-60% with a narrow
portion downstream at 70%, and an 80-90% blockage at the circumflex. He spent 5
days recovering in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, during which he walked as
much as they would allow him. He said the whole process was “scary, but the
care was excellent. I was treated very well.” My mother was with him as much as
she could be, she’d stay every day until visiting hours were over and we would
make her go home. She had seen her father go through open heart surgery twice,
then helped her brother through it. “When it is your significant other it
shakes the core of your world,” she exclaimed. “I felt a lot of disbelief, this
can’t be happening. I worried about having a son about to graduate from high
school. I came to realize [that day] that any plans we had for the future could
just end abruptly, I made a decision to push my husband as hard as I could to
make it through.” My mother, having worked in surgery now for around eight
years and having been a nurse for 33 years at the time of dad’s surgery, she
knows many things about the process that ordinary people would not know. I
believe that they would not have been able to get my father or my uncle off the
breathing machine without her. She is and always will be a nurse, with
incredible patient care abilities. She has helped prep operating rooms for
these surgeries and helped patients into and out of the operating room and into
recovery. “I’ve been fortunate to watch Dr. Nelson and his team provide
excellent care to many patients over the years.”
Another person we are all fortunate to
have in our lives is my brother’s fiancé Leslie. Though she was not a physical
part of my father or uncle’s heart surgeries, she has been a part of Dr. Nelson’s
heart team for four years. In fact, he specifically asked her to join his team
after hearing about her work ethic. She has been a Surgical Scrub Tech for 12
years now and she said she “had always wanted to be a part of the heart team,
but the opportunity just wasn’t available.” Then, “when a fellow employee of
the heart team decided to go back to nursing school full time they decided that
they could no longer be a part of the team anymore. When they asked me if I
would be interested, I jumped at the opportunity!” When asked how she liked the
position Leslie exclaimed, “I absolutely love my job, the fact that I get to
help people every day is a very rewarding and satisfying career. I love my job
so much that I recently decided to go back to school and become nationally
certified, because I was trained on the job when I first started.” When asked
about the stresses involved with such an invasive job she said, “I do consider
my job a very high stress job, I believe that [working in] the operating room
in general is a high stress job. [In] the heart room we work on the sick,
unhealthy, and probably [the] most scared people [to] have surgery. I mean
imagine you are coming in to the hospital for a routine heart catheterization
and they take you back to the room and start the procedure. All of a sudden,
they say that you have had a heart attack, and need emergency CABG (coronary
artery bypass grafting). This is why I love my job, we get people in the most
vulnerable time in their life and make them well again.”
I was able to get a hold of Dr. Nelson
through Leslie for comment for this article. He is an extremely intelligent man
who is passionate about what he does and the people that he has chosen to work
with him. To date, he has done over 4000 heart cases at WMHS and 7000 heart
surgery cases in his career “including my fellowship training.” That is a lot
of people for one man and a small team of highly trained individuals to have
people’s hearts literally in their hands. When asked if he enjoys what he does,
Nelson stated, “in general I enjoy what I do, but not always. [We’re] working in
an imperfect environment with expectations of perfection. [It’s] unrealistic
and can lead to lack of enjoyment and frustration.” He also noted that, “the pre-operation
and post operation periods can be complicated and prolonged, which can also
lead to less than enjoyable working conditions.” So, the job isn’t all it’s cracked
up to be, saving lives for a living. Which led me to ask him if he felt any
level of heroism in his work, to which he said, “I wouldn’t say I feel heroism,
that would suggest arrogance or lack of humility. Gratification that a patient
has benefited from surgery is perhaps the proper perception [for me].” Clearly
this man is very humble about his work, which is something that I personally
like to see in people so talented at what they do for a living. My final
question for Dr. Nelson was how he chooses who he has on his team. He then
explained that “the organization of the heart team is a multistep proves [that]
involves extensive training and of course a strong interest and work ethic.”
Sounds to me like our dear Leslie is definitely in the right place and
surrounded by good company.
I feel that though the Western Maryland
Health System does put a lot of pride and marketing into their Cardiac Health
Unit, the individuals themselves do not get enough recognition. Something that
genuinely bothers me is that people in this area still believe that we don’t
have excellent healthcare here in our area. I hear folks say all the time, that
they think they should just go to Morgantown, or Baltimore, or Pittsburgh for
their care. Sure, those facilities provide excellent care and have wonderful
trauma centers, but our own hospital has some truly amazing healthcare
professionals operating within its walls every single day. These individuals
have been a part of my life since my mother has been a Registered Nurse for 38
years as of last month. They have saved many members of my family including my
Uncle and Father. I will stand behind our hospital and its care because of the
amazing work that departments like the Cardiac Health Unit do over and over
again. It is some truly amazing work done by some incredible people.
Relevant URLs:
Images:
My Father's Heart Pillow with the hand drawn diagram by Dr. Nelson
Dr. Nelson's Signature on every patient's Heart Pillow
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