2 months later I got a really bad back ache and my leg swelled up again. I was getting worried again, so I went back to the hospital because it got to the point where I couldn�t walk because of the pain. When I got there right away they admitted me and ran a number of blood tests. After a day I got the results that when I was sick my immune system got so weak and that the dormant Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome (which is found in 60% of Americans but lie dormant and is no threat to a healthy immune system.) took over and was spaded throughout my blood stream while I was sick. What this meant was that my blood infected with this antibody and this antibody makes my blood �sticky� which means with out proper coagulation or thinning, (Coumadin) that my blood will definitely clot within hours and lead to something major in days. ?So?? I was told that more than likely I would have to be on coumadin for the rest of my life to keep my blood in check. While I was in the hospital I developed another clot in other leg while I was staying there. They started heparin through an IV and kept me over night. Heparin is like an IV blood thinner. It doesn�t actually thin the blood; it stops it from clotting all together. Well when the clots shrunk they traveled from my legs past my heart and got lodged in my pulmonary artery. I couldn�t tell they where there until almost 6 months later when I started to notice I had problems breathing. I went to pulmonary doctor and he gave me some mild asthma treatments. You see when the body develops a clot it usually develops in the legs and with blood thinners breaks apart well mine traveled and my body did not absorb the clots the stuck there and grew over 2 years. I was told that I was diagnosed with 3 pulmonary embolisms 2 on the right and one on the left side of my lungs. I was given medication like steriods and inhalers to to break down what we though was scare tissue left over from the embolisms.
After too long I couldn�t take and I got online and did some searching. It brought me to the University of Chicago and a pulmonolagist named Dr. Gregory Schmidt. I went to this doctor a total of 2 times.. The first time I went to see him I gave him my records and he needed a few minutes to read over them. He called me back then hooked a blood oxygen sensor to my finger and walked with me down the hallway he said when we took 20 steps my heart rate was at 150 bps. When we settled down and I was just sitting there it was at 120.. So he told me he had suspicions it was secondary pulmonary hypertension. He wasn�t too sure so he wanted to run a few tests. He had me scheduled to come back in a week get a heart echo and a VQ scan... I had both done next week and results in one week. I went to see him to hear the news and found out that I had secondary pulmonary hypertension. And I still had the remaining clots in my lungs and they would have to be removed. The right side of my heart was 2-3 times larger than it should have been and since the pressure was so high I ripped a hole in my heart between the two valves. That explained my hear murmor. So I told the doc what should I do and he said it would require surgery and that it is not done very often and my best bet would be to go to San Diego to have the procedure. I signed a form to release my medical records and films to another hospital and I went home.
About two days later I was contacted by Connie Watts from the UCSD and she informed me that she would like to get to know more about my medical condition and then she wanted my health insurance info. I got a call from her again 2 days later and she wanted to know if I could fly out to San Diego within the next week. The surgery was scheduled for May 24th�