{"id":24358,"date":"2018-03-21T12:59:03","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T17:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=24358"},"modified":"2019-02-26T18:36:29","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T23:36:29","slug":"hockey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2018\/03\/21\/hockey\/","title":{"rendered":"Would Alan Play Hockey Again After Heart Surgery?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>His passion was hockey. \u00a0His diagnosis was severe heart valve disease. \u00a0His fear&#8230; Never playing hockey again.<\/p>\n<p>This is Alan&#8217;s story&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6JrvP-jF0mU?showinfo=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Many thanks to Alan Steinberg for meeting with me to share his triumph of getting back on the ice after heart valve surgery. I loved hearing his story and I loved his inspirational attitude toward the procedure and his remarkable recovery.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I would also like to thank <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Patrick-McCarthy-Chicago-Illinois.php\">Dr. Patrick McCarthy<\/a> and the team at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/hospital\/northwestern-memorial-valve-program\">Northwestern Medicine<\/a> for taking such great care of Alan.<\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin&#8217; and skatin&#8217; Alan!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>P.S. For the hearing impaired members of our community, I posted a written transcript of the Alan&#8217;s success story video below.<\/p>\n<p>Alan Steinberg: What I love about hockey is when I was a kid, I was a New York Rangers fan, and I played street hockey. There was something about what your body had to do, with things moving at that pace, that appealed to me. I&#8217;m Alan Steinberg from Rockaway Beach, New York. I live in upper peninsula of Michigan in a little town called Iron Mountain. I&#8217;m a professional writer, a journalist, and an educator.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/..\/Images\/alan-steinberg-hockey-after-aortic-valve.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"314\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I was initially diagnosed with aortic valve insufficiency. The interesting thing about whether or not I had symptoms was I was completely asymptomatic. My first thought was, I will no longer be playing competitive ice hockey, and I thought that&#8217;s not acceptable. When I was diagnosed and I had to choose who was going to do this surgery, I ended up selecting Dr. Patrick McCarthy. I was loaded with questions, and one of the first questions I asked him and his team, I said, &#8220;So tell me what my real odds are of surviving this surgery.&#8221; He looked me in the eye and he said, &#8220;Look, I have a 99% success rate with this surgery, and you,&#8221; he says leaning forward, &#8220;are not in the 1%.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Missy Moddrell: My name is Missy Moddrell. I&#8217;m a Physician Assistant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Cardiac Surgery. Mr. Steinberg had severe aortic regurgitation, and we replaced his aortic valve through a minimally invasive procedure. Patients should feel very comfortable here at Northwestern because this is something that we do everyday, and we do have kind of a strict regimen that we follow for our patients.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24395\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/..\/Images\/missy-moddrell-northwestern-medicine.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"274\" \/>Missy Moddrell, PA-C (Physician Assistant)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Janice Knuckey: My name is Janice Knuckey. I&#8217;m a Nurse Practitioner, and I work in the Cardiac Surgery Outpatient Clinic at Northwestern. I see patients with Dr. McCarthy in the Cardiac Surgery Clinic for their consultations. I will get them ready for surgery, make sure all their testing is completed, and make sure everything&#8217;s ready. I also see them in their followup when they come for their post-op visits.<\/p>\n<p>When we see patients in clinic, I believe there is a lot of anxiety about cardiac surgery. I think it&#8217;s normal. Everyone does recover and heal differently. Some patients need to be patient about the recovery because then they get frustrated, because they feel like they can&#8217;t do the things that they want to do.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24396\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/..\/Images\/janice-knuckey-nurse-practicioner.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"298\" \/>Janice Knuckey, APN\/C-NP (Nurse Practitioner)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Alan Steinberg: The surgery was remarkably successful. I had absolutely no issues. I found out that I came through it very quickly, faster than he does these normally on people my age.<\/p>\n<p>Missy Moddrell: I think Mr. Steinberg came into his surgery very healthy. He was very active. He had a great attitude. The combination of those things helped him recover very quickly from his surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Alan Steinberg: My post-op recovery was so critical in my mind, it was beyond amazing to have people of the quality of Janice and Missy on my team.<\/p>\n<p>Missy Moddrell: I would want patients to know that in the ICU after surgery we have a very comprehensive team managing their care. The nurses, the physician assistants, the nurse practitioner; there&#8217;s the physicians, the critical care doctors, the cardiologists. There&#8217;s a huge team of people that are all caring for our patients after surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Alan Steinberg: Honestly speaking, my first game on the ice I was so relaxed, it never occurred to me I hadn&#8217;t been playing. I show up and the guys are stunned, and they&#8217;re all over me like, &#8220;Are you okay?&#8221; if I got an elbow, and I&#8217;d drop the gloves and go, &#8220;You want to go?&#8221; We&#8217;re all having fun. The goal was, you&#8217;re going to want to feel normal. You want to get back to feeling what you think normal is, so you add up what I had in my mind, the feedback I got at Chicago Northwestern, you saved a life in my view. How could I be anymore grateful for that? How do you be grateful for that?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24399\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/..\/Images\/patient-hockey-after-heart-surgery.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"314\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-patient-stories"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}