Pre-Surgical Complications (Part 3)

By MATTHEW HOLT Strap in for the tale of why your hero is spending most of his life down YouTube rabbit holes of cardiology videos while blundering his way around many many medical centers and exposing many problems with American health care even before he gets close to the operating table. Yes it’s Matthew Holt’s pre-surgical complications – the complications that have arisen before he even gets his failing aortic valve fixed. And yes this is a multi-parter! Part 1, Part 2 The first thing was to message the cardiac scheduling team to postpone the surgery set up for July, not least of which was because England was going to be the World Cup final two days after that and I didn’t want to be in intensive care in case they weren’t showing the game. Yes, yes, I know Messi and the cheating FIFA refs made sure that sadly didn’t happen! I agreed with them to put a date on the calendar for September. But that didn’t stop a prep nurse calling me on Monday 29th June asking me about surgery on July 17th. She was most surprised to find that it wasn’t happening. Yet another time when the message didn’t quite get through. Time to really figure out what this heart surgery involves. Essentially if ...