Well, let me just start at the beginning, a couple of weeks ago Hal called me from work on a Tuesday morning and said he didn't feel right - said he felt a little light headed and just felt weird. He continued to feel worse as the day went on and by the time he came home from work was having hard chills and was running fever - I gave him some ibuprofen and he went to bed - I went on to volleyball practice - I talked to him a little while later and he said he was feeling a little better but his chest was hurting a little - he called me about an hour later having extremely severe chest pains - I got home and gave him a nitro and the pain eased up a bit - we thought he was having a heart attack. We headed to St. Bernards to the ER - Dr. Hill met us there and even tho his EKG didn't look like he was having a heart attack - he felt like it probably was also so they took him to the cath lab and did a cath - the good news was his heart looked great - absolutely no blockage and clean around the stints he has. In trying to figure out where his pain was coming from they discovered a mass in his chest. The mass had nothing to do with the pain he was having - apparently the pain was caused from a virus that caused his stomach to paralyze and push everything up into his chest and esophagus (sp?) and cause spasms - the Drs. said it is nearly impossible to tell the difference in that pain and the pain caused by a heart attack. So, back to the mass - several doctors have looked at the x-rays and cat scans and have decided that while they feel fairly certain the mass is benign it does not need to remain in there. Dr. Stevenson will do surgery on April 1 to remove the mass. They will have to crack his chest similar to open heart surgery. He will spend three days in the hospital and will be off work for a couple of weeks. It won't be fun but the fact he is in such good shape and is young (well sorta lol) should make his recovery much quicker.
I will try and post after the surgery and let all know how it went.
