Sterling's heart is broken. (Really, it's broken)

Hi, my name is Sterling Knight. I'm a 66 year old guy living in Florida and I need some help. Let me tell you what's happened.

I moved here last October from Southern California because I had been unable to continue school (I had been working on a math degree, intending to start a second career as a middle school teacher and was within 5 classes of completing it). I had simply run out of money about the same time Covid19 shut down the school systems. I have a compromised immune system from previous medical problems and with my age was really scared of that disease. I had to move out of the room I had been renting around the same time and so I went to stay with a friend, hoping to return to school before too long.

After couch surfing for 8 months and with no break in the pandemic in sight, I relocated to Florida, sharing a place with my sister, who helped me to make this move. With the lower cost of living here, I hoped to get my feet back under me and to clear up a couple of health concerns, such as worsening vision and a nagging back pain.

After cataract surgery my vision was almost as good as new. My physical therapist's exercises were helping my back a lot and I figured things were going well. I had also mentioned to my doctor that I was getting short of breath a lot quicker then seemed good, so he did an EKG. The results concerned him enough to refer me to the cardiologist that associated with his medical group. So I set up an appointment with him.

We talked and he told me that he needed some more tests to better understand what the problem was. (Hmmm, now I had a "problem?") So I made an appointment to get an echocardiogram. This is an ultrasonic procedure where they spread cold jelly on you and poke you with a wand, body sonar basically. Then he wanted to do a TEE, a bit more elaborate procedure.

A transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE) is a special type of echocardiogram. A transducer (a unit that directs the sound waves) is placed in the esophagus (the pipe that connects the mouth to the stomach). The esophagus is close to the heart, so images from a TEE can give very clear pictures of the heart and its structures. You're in a twilight state that they say isn't sedation but I don't remember anything once they started it and woke up a while later. These procedures gave my cardiologist a lot more information about my problem but he wanted more: a heart catheterization.

A heart catheterization is a procedure that allows your doctor to see how well your blood vessels supply your heart. During the test, they put a long, narrow tube called a catheter into a blood vessel in your arm or leg and guide it to your heart with the aid of a special X-ray machine. Doctors use contrast dye that they inject into your blood vessel through the catheter to create X-ray videos of your valves, coronary arteries, and heart chambers. He told me that it was possible that they would see the need to put in a stent or perform some other procedure which would mean that I might be staying in the hospital overnight. More than a little disquieting, but what are you going to do, I thought? So I went to my appointment at The Heart Institute at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point.

My sister, who has been driving me around to all of these, drove me in. They were all nice people but you wish you'd meet them socially instead of professionally. I got admitted, changed, shaved, poked, needled, and moved around, and eventually wheeled into the procedure room. Another twilight and then I woke up in my room. After a bit, a doctor (someone doing a fellowship, not my cardiologist) came in to talk to me.

What she told me quite surprising. They hadn't put in any stents or done anything else. She said they wouldn't have done any good. They hadn't done anything, because nothing they could do there would be any help. Of the main blood vessels to and from the heart, 2 of mine were completely closed and another was some 95% closed. The resulting damage to the heart was such that it wouldn't be able to repair itself. In fact, the doctors were quite surprised that I was able to walk into the hospital on my own power.

How was this possible, that I had such damage? The best guess is that it was damage incurred during chemotherapy and radiation therapy I had received back in 2008 for a case of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

But it seems the consensus opinion that I was a great candidate for a heart transplant.

I was relatively young (as these things go), my kidneys and liver were fine, and I had never smoked, which along with some other things made me a fine candidate.

Of course, these things cost money. A lot of money. So here I am.

My insurance won't cover everything involved with the surgery and then there's the recovery care and a great deal of testing and biopsies, plus immune-suppressants and other medication for life. Anything you can donate will be a great help with the costs of my medical bills and prescriptions. It'll help with the hospital bills that Medicare doesn't cover. I have no real idea how much this will cost, even the surgery and recovery time in the hospital alone is going to be huge.

Thank you for whatever you can help me with.