It has been two months since my last post and it’s time to update you all on what has been going on in my life. This will be a very long post, and for that I apologize. It’s taken me some time to get to the point where I’m ready to talk about this and I’m still not sure what all I’m ready to share, but here goes.
I have had some very scary health problems over the last month that it seems all started back in July. Just before “The Tempest” opened I caught a cold and went to the Instacare to get some quick meds to get it taken care of fast. I had a show opening and could not be sick through that. Not only a show, but the lead. Turns out I had bronchitis and took my meds and recovered and a couple weeks later the show opened and went well. But through all this I was much more tired and seemed to be struggling more, short of breath, sweating much more with exertion, etc. I figured it meant that I was just getting even more out of shape. I would go shopping with my wife and after walking through the store, I would be drenched.
Fast forward to early/mid September. I have a week where I’m just not feeling well and take a couple of days off. It’s getting close to one of my best friend’s wedding day, and I still have this cough and a little congestion. I wake up on the day of their wedding and I have this terrible pain in my right chest over my ribs. I figure it’s a pulled muscle from all the coughing, maybe pleurisy, so I take some ibuprofen and a hot shower, and head off for the day at the wedding. No real problems or concerns for the rest of the day. Sunday I feel fine. But as I get ready to lay down to sleep Sunday night, I suddenly have this awful chest pain and cannot get comfortable. Take some more ibuprofen and finally get to sleep.
I decide the next morning to stay home from work and go to the Instacare to have the pain checked out, still thinking it’s a pulled muscle or, more likely, pleurisy. I get there, the doctor gives me an EKG and a chest x-ray, and I get diagnosed with pneumonia. They send me home with antibiotics, an inhaler and some couch syrup. They tell me that if I start to feel worse to head to the ER. During the day, I’m fine. No pain, and I can breathe fine. Still don’t feel great, but no real problems. At night and in the morning though, I am in pain, and cannot sleep lying down. So I end up sleeping Monday and Tuesday sitting up on the couch.
Come Wednesday morning (this is September 21st) I wake up with such horrible chest pains I can barely breathe. Moving at all is torturous,and trying to get dressed is agonizing. I am sweating buckets and in more pain than I can ever remember. My wife, although she doesn’t really tell me this at the time, is convinced that I’m having a heart attack. So we run to Alta View Hospital’s ER and they get me right into a room, run an EKG and determine that my heart is ok (although they hear a murmur) and send me off to get a CT scan. There they find that the lining of my right lung is full of fluid. I am immediately put on broad spectrum antibiotics and fluids, and scheduled to have the fluid drained. They take me down to have the fluid drained and drain off about 700 ccs of fluid from around my lung. At this point I am told that I will be transferred to Intermountain Medical Center and will be admitted to the Respiratory ICU. An ambulance is called and I take the trip to IMED.
On Thursday, September 22nd, I receive another CT scan and at that time they put a chest tube in me to drain the fluid. At the time they put in the chest tube, they drain another 1400 ccs of fluid. I am placed on three rotating antibiotics during the day and have the tube and a lovely capture box with me wherever I go. I seemed to be doing well, responding to treatment and was moved down to a regular floor room. Everything seems to be progressing and finally on Sunday, Sept. 25th, they take out the tube, and say I will likely go home on Monday or Tuesday. All told there had been about 3 liters of fluid drained off from around my lung. But, of course, all things did not go according to plan.
Later that day, I spiked a fever, and my white cell count was not decreasing. It was decided at that point that I would need surgery to make sure they got all the infection out from around the lung. At first it was thought that they would go in with scopes to get it cleaned out, but it was finally decided that it would have to be a full thorachotomy. They scheduled it for Tuesday, Sept. 27th. This wonderful news brought up a whole new host of worries and concerns. I had already been in the hospital for a week, and although I felt better than when I went in, was not in the best of health. II am extremely overweight and going under anesthesia is a major risk factor. Not having the surgery was not an option. It was a very emotional time, and through it all my wife and I were very worried and concerned. I had had several blessings by this point. I had a strong conviction that I would not die, but we were still very concerned. It was a time for very deep discussions and finally expressing every fear we had about what was to come so that we could dispel those fears.
Tuesday came, and I was taken in the afternoon into the OR for the surgery. It was expected that the surgery would last about three hours. They would need to put me on ventilation and stop my right lung from working while they operated on it. My wife, my brother and my parents were there in the waiting room for the surgery. After about three and a half hours, they were told that the surgery was almost done, and the surgeon would come out to talk to them. At this point, my poor brother, who had thought this was still relatively simple scope surgery, learned that it was a full open chest operation. They made an incision on my right side and spread the ribs so they could access my lung. The surgeon came out and told them there had been some complications during the surgery. When they shut down my right lung, my left lung would work for a while, but since it was not working with another lung, would start to shut down on its own. They would then have to stop the operation, restart my right lung so they could get the left lung working, then shut the right side down again. While operating, they were draining the infection, and scraping out the infected sections from around my lung. They said they got quite a bit of material out.
During all of this, my blood pressure started to tank and they had to work hard to keep me functioning. Part of that was to intubate my with a tube down my throat. The surgeon told my family that I was in bad shape, that they saw no reason why I would not make it through all this, but that the next few hours would be critical. The anesthesiologist told them that I should recover, but that at that time I was more dead than alive. My parents and brother decided to head home for the night because they knew I was headed for Respiratory ICU after recovery and they felt that too many people there would not be good.
Kris was getting ready to go to recovery, when a friend of ours, who is the charge nurse in the RICU, came out and said that they needed Kris quickly to try to calm me. I was fighting coming out of the anesthesia. Kris came to me, put her hand on my chest, told me she was there and that I needed to calm down and I relaxed immediately. (I, of course, don’t remember any of this. I was still pretty heavily under.) Jeanette also brought out to Kris my wedding ring, which they had to cut off. Once they intubated me, I started to puff up, and they were worried about the circulation in my finger. Kris asked her, as a friend, to bottom line it for her. Jeanette said, “ Get your bishop here to give Tony a blessing and you a blessing, and get your kids here to see their dad.” Kris could not quite bring herself to have the kids come to see me looking like I did. Jeanette told that that if the worst happened, at least the kids would have seen me, and if everything got better, they would be able to see how much better I was doing. But Kris just couldn’t do it.
She called our bishop and found out he had just caught a cold. She called her brother-in-law, and he got a neighbor and they both came down and gave me a blessing and Kris a blessing. When Kris first saw me, I was extremely puffy. My face, lips and tongue were all very swollen. She was told I would be intubated for 24-48 hours and that the puffiness would get worse. However within a few hours, the puffiness had gone down, and I was looking better.
As I started to come out of the anesthesia, I tried to communicate with Kris by drawing letters on her hand. This was not successful, so they gave me a pen and some paper. I asked about the kids, my parents, and told Kris that I loved her. Then I asked when I could get the tube out of my throat. That was my big concern. I wanted that tube out! At the time I was on 100% ventilation. The respiratory tech told Kris that they would start backing me off and that it would be a two steps forward, one step back process. They would take me to 90%, then 80% at which point I would likely have some problems, then they would take it back to 90% and so on. As they started backing off the ventilation, they never had to go back up. I had problems when I would cough, in that I couldn’t get anything up through the tube on my own and would have to suctioned out. By 9:30 Wednesday morning (Sept. 28th) the respiratory tech was ready to take the tube out, but had to wait for the doctor to finish rounds to okay it. Finally by 12:30 that day, I had the intubation tube was removed.
I was in the RICU for another two to three days while they waited for a room to become available to move me into. I was up and walking soon, and making real strides on my recovery. It was still very difficult to breathe and especially when walking. By the time they moved me to the floor of the heart and lung center, they decided I needed to have a swallow study to see if that had led to the the pneumonia. They believed that I had aspirated something into my lung to cause that and wanted to see what my swallowing was like. I was made to drink and chew several things coated in barium while having a fluoroscope take pictures of my esophagus.
They also gave me a Transesophageal Echocardiagram, or TEE to try to figure out why I had a heart murmur. They thought that it could be one of two things: either I had a vegetation (infection) on the valve that had somehow occurred from the infection around my lung, or a chordae, which act as closure mechanisms for the valve, had ruptured. This latter option would require open heart surgery at some point in my future. After the TEE, and having the specialist read that, they determined, much to my relief, that they believe it to be a “floppy” valve that is volume dependent. What this means is that I have a valve that, if I am either dehydrated or over loaded with fluid, will work inefficiently. It is just a genetic quirk, and will not require surgery. We’re still waiting to make sure that that diagnosis stands.
I was finally released from the hospital on Wednesday, Oct. 5th. I kept getting comments from the doctors and nurses about being a “miracle” patient. More than one doctor came in and would give me a funny look, ask me if I was Anthony Porter, and then tell me that after reading my chart, I looked much better than they expected me to look. At this point, I was more than glad to be out of the hospital. I spent another week at home recuperating, and started back to work on Oct. 24th working full days.
I’m going to get a little “preachy” here. If you know me at all, you know that I have a strong testimony of Jesus Christ and His gospel. I know that my quick recovery and increased healing is due to the priesthood blessings and prayers that were offered on my behalf. I have never been more sure of the power of prayer and priesthood power than I am now. I can truly say that I have felt the prayers being offered for me. And it is such a humbling experience knowing that so many people were concerned for the well-being of me and my family.
Rest assured, however, that I am still my old self. I am coming back to full power and more determined than ever to reach my goals and be a leaner, meaner me. I know this is an excessively long post, and I hope that I haven’t lost too many of you. I got more out that I thought I would, although there are still some things I have kept for myself and family. I just had to get it off my chest and out to the universe.
Quote of the day:
“If your time ain't come, not even a doctor can kill you. ~ American Proverb”
