My heart failed, and today I become part machine

As many of you read this, I’m being wheeled into an operating room for a surgery that will hopefully save my life. It will also change my life forever.

In just a few hours I’ll be the proud owner of a left ventricular assist device (LVAD for short). It’s a small machine of tubes and batteries that will be attached to my dying heart in an effort to keep it pumping until I can get a transplant.

I have congestive heart failure, and I’m only 32.

Here’s my story.

The hardest thing is looking the part

I’ve been meaning to sit down and tell this story for some time now. But I always put it off because frankly, part of me is embarrassed about it.

I’m a big man.

I’ve been more than 300 pounds for most of my adult life. So even though the doctors assure me my weight didn’t cause the heart failure, I certainly have the body type many people associate with heart problems.

When I tell people I have heart failure, my worry is they automatically assume I’m a lazy couch potato who eats junk constantly, doesn’t exercise and has a chest full of clogged, greasy arteries.

But that’s not true. In fact – I work an insane amount at my job — I’m fond of very high-intensity physical workouts, and my arteries are very clean. I even have an angiogram to prove it.

The truth is, no one seems to know why my heart failed. We’ll probably never know.

The symptoms

We also don’t know when my heart started to fail.

As little as a year ago and a half ago, I could walk a mile with a 70-pound log on my shoulders. Spending an hour or more at the gym pounding a tire with sledgehammers was my idea of a great evening.

But at some point – I think last December or January – I experienced a noticeable lack of physical ability. Suddenly I couldn’t do my normal exercise routine without feeling exhausted and totally out of breath.

I didn’t give it much thought though. I was up to my elbows in launching EastIdahoNews.com, and my gym attendance had been less than stellar.

I assumed the weakness was the result of overwork, stress and slacking on my gym attendance. I put the weakness out of my mind.

But then I got sick. Really sick.

I woke up one morning short of breath. I felt weak and noticed immediately that I couldn’t walk across my own bedroom without feeling winded. It was bizarre.

It felt as though someone had hung a millstone around my shoulders and shackled my feet together. Every step was a chore and stairs were suddenly the bane of my existence.

I tried to keep it together. I soldiered on for about a week — telling everyone around me I was fine. It was stupid of me, but I thought I was just had influenza or something.

When I finally did go see a doctor, he did a chest X-ray and found my lungs were full of fluid. He promptly diagnosed me with pneumonia. He gave me some mild medications, told me to sleep, drink lots of water and that I’d be better in a couple days.

But I didn’t get better – in fact, I just got worse. For the next three weeks I returned to the clinic three times a week to a bewildered doctor who kept giving me shots of powerful antibiotics and steroids.

It went on that long because the steroids do make you feel better, albeit temporarily.

But things never got better for any length of time. Eventually, the doctor ordered an echocardiogram, because in my doctor’s words, “There are some very rare instances where pneumonia can attack your heart.”

I guess I fell into the rare category, because the test revealed a problem with my heart.

He scheduled me for a visit with a cardiologist the next week to discuss it, but I never made it to the appointment.

The day after the test, I could barely stand or breathe. My wife rushed me to the emergency room at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center.

The diagnosis

What followed was a whirlwind nine days in the cardiology ward at EIRMC where I learned I had heart failure.

I met my cardiologists, Drs. Blake Wachter and Doug Blank, a pair of amazing doctors with the Idaho Heart Institute and the EIRMC Heart Clinic.

They explained that the term “heart failure” is a bit misleading. It doesn’t mean your heart has stopped or totally failed — and it’s not a heart attack or heart disease (although both can cause failure).

Rather, heart failure is where one side of your heart stops pumping efficiently, and your blood slows. The result is your muscles don’t get the blood or oxygen they need to function, and your body cannot rid itself of fluid.

That fluid build-up makes patients swell up like a water balloon, which puts pressure on their lungs so patients can’t breathe.

So generally, when a heart failure patient comes into the E.R., the first step is to “get them dry” or drain them with diuretics. In other words, they make you pee a lot.

They also give you medications to strengthen the heart as you drain.

During my first visit to EIRMC I lost 60 pounds of fluid. I suddenly found myself thinner than I’d been in a decade.

Now, I don’t know when I gained that fluid, since my weight has been constant for years. But I assume at some point I gradually lost a lot of muscle that was simultaneously replaced by fluid.

The doctors also put me on an odd diet — low sodium and limited liquids. Due to my body’s inability to get rid of liquids I can only drink 2 liters of liquid daily and my sodium intake has to be greatly reduced since sodium causes me to retain water.

My doctors tell me they are the only type of physicians that don’t tell patients to “go home and drink lots of fluids.”

It’s been a difficult adjustment, but I’ve had a tremendous amount of support coping with the changes in lifestyle and physical ability.

My entire family has come together to help make things easier. And my co-workers at EastIdahoNews.com are very protective of my health. We often joke that Nate Eaton seems to worry about my health more than my wife Amy.

A long road to recovery

Typically, heart failure patients stabilize after a period of time, with a certain combination of medications and by watching their fluid intake and sodium.

In many failure cases, with continued treatment, patients can see a reversal of their symptoms and regain most of the heart functionality that was lost.

Many of those patients can go years before trouble arises again.

Unfortunately, I was not one of those cases. Despite all my efforts, I never stabilized.

My weight was constantly changing, and my energy never returned. My co-workers occasionally joked that I’ve looked like death during the last few months.

I coped by slowing down and trying my best to take it easy. But the truth is slowing down is just as hard, because it forces you to face just how much ability you’ve lost.

Thankfully, with a lot of help, I’ve been able to at least keep living a semblance of normal life.

But I’ve also been hospitalized four times now – and we’ve tried multiple methods of treatment — all of which failed.

Along the way, I even got a pacemaker and defibrillator installed to prevent my sudden and untimely demise.

Ultimately, Dr. Wachter recommended LVAD surgery to be followed by an eventual heart transplant. Her advice was echoed several weeks later when I traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for a second opinion.

The Mayo was an incredible experience, and it was reassuring to hear another recommendation for surgery and the transplant list.

The Mayo doctors also recommended I get the surgery done in Salt Lake City, which brought me to Intermountain Healthcare, where I have been under evaluation for the past week.

Nervous but hopeful

I’m nervous as I prepare to head into the operating room. I’m going to come out with a machine that will need constant attention, but one that will ultimately make me whole again until a new heart is available.

I’m also confident, because I have a great team here in Salt Lake City and in Idaho Falls. I also have many friends, family members and colleagues who have continually reached out to offer their support.

I am incredibly grateful to all of you for your thoughts, words, actions and prayers on my behalf.

I’ve still got a long way to go, and possibly several months of recovery. But I’m hopeful, and I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

Thanks again for the support.

— Nate Sunderland, Managing Editor