My Grandfather’s Aortic Aneurysm Surgery

Next week will mark the 6th anniversary of my grandfather’s Aortic Aneurysm Surgery that he had 6 years ago. We will be celebrating this wonderful milestone with cake and ice cream at a little family get-together next week.

Our family nightmare began 6 years ago when my grandfather woke up from a deep sleep not feeling well and struggling to breathe. He had nausea, severe chest pain, a heavy feeling in his chest, some upper back pain and some coughing.

At first my grandmother thought that my grandfather was having a heart attack and she immediately called the ambulance. The ambulance arrived within 15 minutes and was able to stabilize my grandfather to get him to the hospital emergency room.

Once he was at the emergency room they immediately evaluated him and got him hooked up to a heart monitor and oxygen. The emergency room physician immediately suspected that my grandfather had a Aortic Aneurysm and they quickly ordered some tests. Within 30 minutes we had our answer and it was indeed an Aneurysm.

Up until that point my grandfather was pretty healthy and very active. We did not see this health crisis coming and he didn’t have any symptoms that we are aware of. It was like he went to bed one night feeling great and woke up 4 hours later struggling for his life.

Our family took this news very hard and we awaited for the surgeon to get into the hospital so that they could do open chest surgery on him to fix his Aortic Aneurysm. The doctors told us that he had a very good chance of pulling through since we got him to the hospital quickly. They told us that getting medical treatment quickly with these type of symptoms is crucial to having a positive outcome.

We sat in the waiting room for 5 hours waiting for someone to come through the double doors to tell us how my grandfather was. The time seemed to have drug on for days, even though only 5 hours had passed. Finally his surgeon and the resident doctor came into the waiting room to tell us that my grandfather pulled through the surgery but it would be touch and go for the first 48 hours.

To make a long story short, my grandfather did extremely well after his surgery and only spent 7 days in the hospital. He was a lucky man and we are very grateful to the skilled doctors, surgeons and nurses who took care of him and saved his life.

We are going to mark this special 6 year milestone in his recovery with a little get-together next week and let me tell you, we are all super proud at how well my grandfather has done over the past 6 years.

Have any of you ever had a family member who suffered with an Aortic Aneurysm? If so, was it caught in time and did they end up having the surgery? I would love to hear your story if you don’t mind sharing it with all us. Please feel free to share your story and thoughts below via our comment form here on our blog.