I called up all my family (sans Dad who’s in Japan) to wish them a Turkey day. Normally I only call my Dad’s side, since Mom and her sibs are Canadian, and her mom is British by birth. This year, I thought to call everyone on a whim, since this is the first year they’re all living in the USA. It was a good thing too, since it turns out gran has a heart problem.
Earlier this year (around the time X2: X-Men United came out) she had bypass for blockage.
Bypass is when the outer arteries of the heart gets blocked and can cause a heart attack. Which she had. The blockage is caused by fat deposits that build up in the arteries of the heart over years and years. This is why people bitch about fat in diets and cholesterol. Coronary (aka heart) disease and ‘clogged arteries’ can be caused by poor diet, and kill a freakishly high number of people a year. I’d rant about ‘The Fattening of America’ but other people do that better, and I’m on about hearts.
Now, if an artery is blocked and someone has a heart attack, like oddly BOTH my grandmothers, the most common surgery is open heart. You sew in a new blood vessel from somewhere else in the body (normally a leg) and make a bridge to bypass the blockage. Both of my grandmothers have had triple bypass surgery. My paternal gran had it a decade ago (at 73) and my maternal had it done earlier this year (at 82).
Funny story, they take the blood vessel from your leg because there are a lot of redundant vessels that can be removed without doing harm. Except as we found out, my paternal gran had such piss poor circulation that she got a clot in that leg and had to have another surgery to fix that. Well it was funny at the time to us, I’m not sure why right now.
Less funny is that my other grandmother has a different heart problem post surgery. She has valve leakage and is 83. Yes, my grandmothers were both born in 1920 (paternal in July, maternal in November).
As a short tangent, a heart attack is when your arteries are so blocked that no blood can run through and … well it stops because it’s not getting the juice. This shouldn’t be confused with angina, which is similar and feels like indigestion at times. Angina means that blood is getting through, but it’s like a compressed vein and hurts like a fucker. My paternal gran had that for a bit. She’s okay now.
Valve leakage is actually valvular heart disease, which is a broad, sweeping name given to any dysfunction or abnormality of one or more of the heart’s four valves. A valve is a tissue flap which keeps blood flowing in one direction only at a time. Your arteries are one way streets and your valves are the traffic cops. For normal hearts, the valves act like gates, swinging open to permit blood flow and snapping closed otherwise.
Now the exact name of valve leakage is valvular regurgitation (or valvular incompetence or valvular insufficiency). Sounds nasty, don’t it? It is. That’s when the blood goes the wrong way because the valve closes poorly. The leakage can be really bad or not, but if it is bad, it’s because it’s preventing the heart from pushing enough blood through said valve.
My Mom said that gran would need surgery, and she’s too weak for the surgery (though she’s getting exploratory work done next week). Naturally I did research, hence this blog entry, and learned that she may not have to. If the leak is minor, they can treat it with ACE inhibitors to widen the blood vessels and lower her blood pressure. Now if it IS bad, she’ll need repair or replacement surgery. My paternal grandfather had a pig valve put in, by way of replacement.
The repair, which I’m less familiar with, depends on which valve is busted. It can be done non-surgical style with a balloon (percutaneous balloon valvuloplasty) to pop it back into place. There’s also valvulotomy, in which the narrowed valves are widened with a scalpel. The minimally invasive surgery is done with a small incision through the breastbone.
That said, the heart valve replacement is when you crack open the chest and put in a fake valve that replaces the broken one. The biological valve is either a xenograft from an animal or an allograft from a dead human donor. Yes, I know humans are animals. The fake valves can last up to 30 years. My grandfather’s lasted about 20, but then again, he had it put in 20 years ago, and things are better now. There are also mechanical valves, which are, well, mechanical. There’s a risk of complications, and those get worse as you get older, like blood clots.
Which all brings me down to this. My grandmother will likely be dead within 12 months. She could live for 5 weeks, 5 months or 5 years with a leak if she was healthy and young, but she’s not.
Happy Thanksgiving.