At A Glance
Author	Hotpiercedguy
Contact	[email protected]
IAM	hotpiercedguy
When	N/A
Artist	Dr. Bruce A. Reitz
Studio	Stanford University Medical Center
Location	Stanford, CA

I guess I should start off with a little back ground. My name is Nick. I am 24 years old. I have a very rare disorder known as Marfan's Syndrome. You have probably never heard of it. A lot of doctors have never heard of it. Abraham Lincoln had it (probably my only claim to fame) no one knew it back then though. I was diagnosed with it in 1988, when I was 8 years old. It is traditionally characterized by being tall and very skinny, and having severe heart problems, in sort. So you may be asking "Why the hell is this being submitted to BME? Well, a good part of my heart is now fake, including a big portion of it now being metal.

I won't bore you with all the life details, but by the time I had reached my 24th birthday, I had 14 assorted surgeries including 3 partial heart transplants. I had regular echocardiogram checkups every 6 months. Everything looked good until a regular checkup. I was informed my aorta itself had aneurismed to the size of 80 millimeters, which suffice to say can be fatal at any moment if it ruptured. I was informed I had to do something about it now ASAP. I contacted the surgeon who had done several surgeries on me (and was very good) at Stanford University. We set a pre date for surgery discussion. I went and talked with him and he took a look and informed me it was worse than they originally thought, and I was about to have a very dangerous surgery. He estimated that optimistically I had about a %90 chance of coming through ok. He also informed me my aortic valve was leaking but not bad enough to worry about right now. We agreed on a surgery date January 13th, 2005.

I flew back down to California (I live in Seattle, WA) with both my parents, both my grandparents, and my ex-wife Jacy (who was there for support and I am very glad she was) Surgery day arrived and I showed up at the hospital at 5:30 A.M. I was prepped and put under.

They opened me up... and realized it was much worse than they had originally thought. My aortic valve was leaking terribly, and my whole aorta and parts of my descending aorta would need replacement, as well as parts of my left and right subclavian arteries, and my left and right carotid arteries. When they had opened me up... they estimated my survival at about 70-80% tops. Surgery was supposed to take around 4-6 hours. It took 10 hours and 45 minutes. They replaced my aortic valve with a St. Jude valve, which is pure metal. The rest was replaced with Dacron, a kind of bio-plastic.

There wasn't much complication during the actual surgery, other than the surgeons accidentally breaking one of my ribs while opening my chest cavity (it also happened to me the last time i had surgery, just a different rib) and my vocal cords being damaged by the breathing tube I had in my throat. When I woke and was coherent enough to understand what was going n around me, I was informed what they had done. I knew what this meant. Since I now had the St. Jude valve in, I would have to take Coumadin for the rest of my life. Now, for those not familiar with it, Coumadin is a heavy duty prescription blood thinner. It is needed so that my body does not try and calcify the metal valve. Most people have a blood clot rating of 1.0 and it takes about 12 seconds for the blood to clot. I have a clot number of about 3.5, and it takes my blood around 35 seconds to clot.

The reason that this was really bad news to me is that I run a suspension group in the greater Seattle area. I have suspended probably well over 40-50 times. I love it. And now having this valve pretty much meant I was never going to be able to suspend again, or I may very well bleed to death. As it was piercings and tattoos would probably be ok, but both will bruise horribly and bleed profusely.

It has only been a scant month since the surgery, and I am still recovering, although I would say I am probably %90 of what i was before, and getting a little better everyday. Having a pure metal valve does have its interesting points. I can hear it all the time, especially at night when I am laying down or it is very quiet out. I don't know yet what I am going to do in regards to body modification itself... so we shall see. I don't like the thought of not suspending ever again, but obviously my life isn't worth it. All I can do for now is recover to the best of my ability, and I hope in some way what i have written may help someone who has to go through a similar situation. Thank you for your time and feel free to contact e either via my IAM page or by e-mail at [email protected]