Carol Hanson

Hi. My name is Carol Hanson. I'm 47 years old and until June of this year I worked at the local newspaper where I wrote the people news and obituaries. I'm married and have two sons, 20 and 18.

I first found out about my heart condition in 1988 when my heart skipped beats during minor surgery. I had not experienced any previous symptoms. I was sent to a cardiologist who discovered that I had mitral valve regurgitation and cardiomyopathy. I took no medications and my condition was monitored by an echocardiogram every year. Because of changes in my work I missed going to the cardiologist for four years, but this past year I began to experience shortness of breath and fatigue, but decided that was due to the fact that I smoked and my job was very stressful. I experienced an anxiety attack at work one day in May and went to see my primary care physician who suggested that I have a complete physical. It was during this time that I confessed to my doctor that I had not seen the cardiologist for four years. He set up an appointment with me for the following week.

That weekend I experienced pain in my chest and went to the emergency room. The doctor who took care of me the next day told me that I had had an esophageal spasm (I suffer from GERD) and sent me home. I saw my cardiologist and had an echo two days later. On Friday of that week the cardio called me and said that I needed to have open heart surgery and that his office would set up an appointment for me with a surgeon. He said that my mitral valve was in bad shape and stressed that the surgery needed to be performed within a year. The echo showed my ejection fraction to be 20%. The appointment with the surgeon was set for July 20.

After a TEE and heart cath, surgery was scheduled for July 25 at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Washington. My surgeon, Dr. Timothy Icenogle, and I decided that if a valve replacement was necessary that I would receive the St. Jude Mechanical, but surgery was cancelled because my white count was 20,000, not optimal for heart surgery. After examination by an infectious disease specialist found nothing amiss surgery was scheduled for that Friday. On Thursday night, while talking with my surgeon, I experienced a pain in my head. A CT Scan showed that I had a sinus infection and surgery was rescheduled for August 19. Meanwhile my primary care doc and cardio decided that I needed to see an ear, nose and throat doc for the sinus infection. He cancelled the surgery. During this time my blood was drawn every week for the WBC but never got below 13,000. Finally one day my white count was a normal 9.6 and surgery was scheduled for September 26. We checked into the hospital the day before where a blood sample was taken and it was found that my white count had again soared to 19,000. I called my surgeon's office and told his assistant about this new development. The surgeon was in Florida so they left a message with his answering service to call me that night when he was due back. Unfortunately, the service got the message wrong and told him that my white count was 9.6.

The next morning we arrived at the hospital and told them about the white count, but they prepped me and waited for Dr. Icenogle to decide what to do. So there I was in pre-op with five doctors standing around me discussing what to do with me.... send me home or keep me in the hospital as my cardio suggested. He won.

Dr. Icenogle told me that people who have white counts that high usually have either leukemia, a tumor somewhere or they were dead. A battery of tests could not determine the cause of the high white count, so after a week in the hospital surgery was finally performed October 3. Surgery went well (he was able to repair my mitral valve using an annulplasty ring) until they removed me from the bypass and I started hemorrhaging and required four units of blood. I also required a lot of anesthesia and as a result didn't wake up until the following afternoon. A few days after the surgery I experienced trouble breathing until it was discovered that I was allergic to drugs used during respiratory therapy. I went home seven days after my surgery. I never really experienced any pain from my incision but have had trouble with fluid retention. I returned to the hospital for three days with fluid on my heart and two weeks later I was admitted with fluid on my lung, which required a four-day stay.

I wish that this was the end of the story, but during my last visit to my cardiologist he told me that my heart is now "Global" his term for the fact that there is no part of my heart unaffected by heart disease. I will now probably require a heart transplant.