Beth's Journal

It's hard to know when my journey actually started..I contracted Covid back in January 2021 and was hospitalized for only 2 days because of a low pulse ox rate due to pneumonia. Once I tested negative I immediately got vaccinated with both doses. From that time on I was feeling just okay had a lot of swelling of my feet and legs, got tired fairly easy and had low back pain. Well the back pain got worse and worse until I ended up in the ICU unit at Wake Med with my blood being infected, which caused an abscess on my coccyx and my heart being ravaged. After spending a week in the hospital I spent 6 weeks in a nursing home on antibiotics every 4 hours which managed to take care of the abscess but did nothing for my heart, the damage was already done. After having a TEE done I found out that I had major leaking in my aortic and mitral valves and vegetation on my tricuspid valve. While in the nursing home I was going into congestive heart failure and had started going downhill fast. My cardiologist started the process and on June 15, 2022, I received 2 new cow valves, one each in my aortic and mitral valves and the vegetation turned out to be a benign tumor in my tricuspid. I'm not at 100% just yet, but as you can see by my pic I'm not doing bad, just so glad I made the decision to have the surgery, I can't imagine where I'd be if I hadn't .  I’m still speculating how my blood got infected.