Glenn Dennis, 61, said it felt like he was drowning last October when he could not catch his breath.
“I was scared … I really didn’t know what was going on,” Dennis recalled, adding there were no warning signs that anything was amiss with his health.
“I was being very careful with my life, very careful of what I ate. It came as a real shock that, all of a sudden, [I was] this sick,” the Scarborough man told Global News.
Dennis called 911 and was rushed to Scarborough General Hospital in Toronto. Tests showed an infection in his heart known as endocarditis.
Dr. Subodh Verma, a cardiac surgeon-scientist and professor at the University of Toronto, said the situation was very serious and life-threatening.
“He had a severe infection involving two of the main valves of the heart, endocarditis of the aortic valve and endocarditis of the mitral valve,” Verma explained. “There was actually pus and an abscess that had formed within the heart.”
“When we saw this patient, he was in profound heart failure,” Verma said.
But an emergency surgery gave Dennis the chance to live.
“At the end of seven hours he had two new valves and a heart that was free of any infection,” Verma said. “Then the fight really started in the ICU to make sure that he could actually get through the next few days.”
Endocarditis is a relatively rare condition.
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“The infections are brewing slowly, and usually there is a sort of an indolent period where the infections feel like you’ve got a fever or you’re unwell,” Verma explained.
The infection can happen in a few ways. People can get infected through contaminated needles and drug use. But this was not the case for Dennis, Verma added.
Infections can also happen through dental work or other invasive procedures where bad bacteria are introduced. People with weaker immune systems are also at a higher level of risk.
“In some cases, we fail either because the bacteria are too strong or because the host is weak or, in many cases, we just don’t know,” he said.
Doctors caution that time is critical when managing this type of infection.
“If you can’t get it under control quickly, heart failure, lung failure, kidney failure, the risk of having a stroke and the risk of dying is extremely high,” Verma said.
As Dennis learned, for some patients, including his case, the cause is never found.
“No one has a definitive answer.”
Verma said if the infection is caught early, in many cases it can be treated with antibiotics.
“But once it gets to that point where the valve and the heart have such destruction, there’s no antibiotics that are going to really work. You need definitive surgery.”
Verma said people need to be aware of signs and any potential symptoms that are out of the ordinary. Common symptoms include running a fever, feelings of malaise and fatigue and sweats or night sweats that are unusual.
“Don’t write those things off, because in many cases, these infections don’t rise to the point, you know, they don’t go from zero to 100 overnight,” Verma said.
Less common symptoms include unexplained weight loss, blood in urine, tenderness under the left rib cage, or painless red, purple or brown flat spot on the sole of a person’s feet or palms of the hands.
After 20 years in operating rooms, Verma said he is still in awe of what hearts teach him.
“Every time I open the chest and I see it, what a miraculous organ. The colors, the strength, the energy. It’s unbelievable what this organ has. And then you can see in it each time … the drive to want to beat, you know, it doesn’t want to stop.”
Dennis has made a strong recovery and has been enjoying time with his children and friends. He is also delving deeper into his photography hobby.
This Valentine’s Day will be a special one as Dennis celebrates having both a healed heart and his birthday on Feb. 14.
“It’s kind of a new lease on life is the way you look at it,” Dennis said. “One of the doctors says, ‘God has another plan for you.’ I don’t know what it is yet, but he says he wasn’t ready for me.”
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