“You need to see a heart surgeon” … part 5

Anje Craft
Nov 8 · 7 min read

the results & 2nd heart surgery lead up


18 October 2019 — results day with Haris

The day comes for me to get all the recent test results and verdict from Haris. I have another ECG done (I’ve had so many of these I can pretty much read the squiggly lines now) then I get called in to see Haris. I was expecting him to confirm the pacemaker situation and that was about it. But that wasn’t about it, I was so far out it was scary. The next hour or so with Haris is really a blur. I can’t remember everything that was discussed because it was so far away from what I was expecting to hear I was in shock. I should’ve had someone with me but I just wasn’t expecting what was coming.

He proceeds to say there were 3 separate things wrong with my heart. None of them were there when I had my first heart surgery in January or when I had follow up tests in February after the surgery, and none of them seemed to be connected. In addition to the SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) in 2 spots in the right atrium (one near the AV node), I also had VT (ventricular tachycardia) in what he suspected was in an area of my heart in front of or near the aortic valve (the valve that controls the oxygenated blood flow out of the left heart ventricle and into the body). But obviously he couldn’t confirm this without going into the heart to see.

He then goes on to talk about the main wiring through the middle of my heart and how it’s not working properly. He said I was showing all the symptoms of Sarcoid of the heart, a heart disease with no known cure. But when I had the heart MRI it was squeaky clean. He doesn’t have any answers for this, it could be very early onset of Sarcoid, it could be something else, but he couldn’t confirm at that stage and basically he was a bit baffled. He had never had any patient before presenting with all 3 different things in a heart at once but he’d be able to find out a lot more when performing another ablation to treat the VT. I can’t recall very much about what he went on to say about the main wiring through the middle as I had started to cry and was not taking much in, a little bit of shock was going down.

So basically my heart was doing stupid stuff everywhere. My heart rate and heart rhythm were having a mind of their own, I wasn’t getting enough oxygenated blood pumping around and everything in my heart wasn’t talking to each other. Haris let me know that a pacemaker at this stage was off the table which I very relieved to hear. He goes to his brief case and pulls out what he referred to as ‘hardware’. The first one is a pacemaker, the second one is an ICD (internal cardioverter defibrillator). The ICD is almost twice the size and weight of the pacemaker. He starts talking about the ICD and that’s all I really got. I couldn’t tell you anything else he was saying at the time because I couldn’t comprehend what was going on.

Haris settles me and says we are going to get through this the same way I would climb a mountain, one step at a time. The first step is surgery on 5 November (he actually said on the Monday which was in 3 days time and I was a flat out no, I needed time to get a grasp on the situation, it was my mums 60th and I had stuff to sort out at work). He gave me 2 weeks. This surgery would be another ablation similar to what I had in January. January was 4.5 hours and 8 ‘lots’ (yes this is the medical term haha) of adrenaline going through one vein through my right groin. The upcoming surgery would be an unknown number of hours, 20 to 30 ‘lots’ of adrenaline, going through both my groin (maybe both sides) through the vein and aorta artery to my heart. As well as many weeks off work and a longer recovery. I start crying again because the first surgery was absolute hell. I kept thinking that this one was going to be the worst thing I could imagine EVER going through. How the hell could I cope going through it again on a totally different level. Haris says some other stuff for the next 10 minutes that I don’t remember. I leave the hospital, get in my car and start bawling my eyes out. All I can focus on is why the hell is this happening to me and maybe I shouldn’t have gone to China earlier in the year as I must’ve subconsciously killed half the god damn country! I do believe that things happen for us not to us, but I was struggling to understand what this was for.

Haris rings me when I’m driving home from Brisbane when I’m on the phone to my friend Alana, then sends me a few text messages that afternoon. Seriously, what heart surgeon does that! I have his mobile number and he insists that I contact him at any time. Don’t even worry about going through his rooms. After I message him saying how grateful I am and I couldn’t have a better person looking after me, he messages back saying he couldn’t think of a better person to look after, first step first and please don’t worry ok? The level of care is beyond belief.


Am I going to wake up in the morning

After getting the results from Haris it was pretty fair to say that I was a little edgy with going about my day to day life and trying to still be active. Every time I did something it was always front of mind that shit could go south quickly. The Wednesday night after I’d seen Haris (23 October) I’d gone to play netball. I was definitely not playing to any decent standard I had previously but it was really good mentally for me to keep doing something I loved and see my friends. I didn’t feel good when I finished my game. I had a tight feeling in my chest, I was tired and just generally uneasy. I drove home and said to my mate/flat mate Matt “I don’t want to scare you but I really don’t feel good. If I wake you during the night you may either need to call an ambulance or take me to the hospital.” He asks should I really be playing sport at the moment … well probably not but I can’t just shut down. I’ll do what I can until I can’t anymore. That night when I was laying in bed trying to get to sleep, I was honestly unsure if I was going to wake up in the morning. It was very scary and it wasn’t the only time it happened leading up to the 2nd heart surgery on 5 November 2019.


The biting snake dream

I’m not much of a dreamer when I sleep but I started to have this recurring dream a few nights after I’d seen Haris. I was dreaming that there was this medium sized snake that kept wrapping itself around me and continuously biting me. It became so vivid on the Saturday night (8 days after I’d seen Haris — 26 October 2019) that I woke up in a panic, stripped my bed and was looking for my cat. It was so real that I thought the snake was in my bed, thought it had eaten my cat (Kitty) and was hiding in my room. I couldn’t get back to sleep because of this god damn snake supposedly in my room. What the hell was all that about! I googled biting snake dreams and a few different things came up including being a symbol of fear in real life … a threat, risk, tension or resistance. It all made perfect sense. Subconsciously all this stuff was going on in my head!


Seeing the Psych!

I was worried about how bad this upcoming surgery was going to be. It was different this time around. The first time I was going in blindfolded, this time I was aware of how it all worked, what happened on the day, the runnings of everything in the hospital etc. I’m not sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing knowing so much. My work were concerned about me and wanted me to go see a psych, obviously to ensure I was ok but also to cover their butts to ensure I was ok to be at work leading up to surgery. My work was keeping me sane!

Off I go to my GP and get a referral to an awesome psychologist that I enlisted the help of in 2014 and 2015 when I was going through a difficult relationship break up. I felt comfortable with her and she knew my history so talking to her was really easy. I explained what was going on and how I was a bit worried about how ‘bad’ this surgery was going to be compared to the one in January, more adrenaline, more involved, longer etc. She helped me visualise everything going good and took my focus off what I’d experienced in my previous surgery. I’m not sure how she did this but it felt like such a simple mindset readjustment that I wasn’t able to do on my own. She mentioned this book by Dr Joe Dispenza called You Are The Placebo. It was really weird because literally the day before I was in a leadership call with graduates from the Mountains and Marathons program I’d completed earlier in the year and Dr Joe Dispenza was mentioned to me there… twice in 2 days! The week before I’d already ordered 5 books that I thought would help me during recovery .. Atomic Habits by James Clear, Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins, How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body by David Hamilton, Super Attractor by Gabrielle Bernstein, and Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I went about to get a hold of You Are The Placebo as well to read during my recovery. I walked out of that session feeling like a completely different person, it changed how I was thinking about everything, completely changed my focus, my mindset, my visualisation … until the day before the surgery.

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