Sandy's Posts

It's been apparently a very long time since I've been on here- though I do read Adam's information and have attended some of the webinars over the years. It's been about 7.5 years since the surgery, where I had the aneuryzed(?) portion of my aorta replaced with a dacron tube, and, since they were in there, my bicuspid aortic valve was replaced as well. In January of 2024 I quite suddenly became quite ill, and ended up in septic shock before what was wrong was determined. Turns out the bacteria pseudomonas aeruginosa had taken up residence inside my body. That is quite a common bacteria - according to everything I've read - and most people resist it quite easily. BUT - for people with artificial body parts - the bacteria can latch onto that artificial body part and then form a 'biofilm' to protect itself when bombarded with antibiotics. After my initial treatment, the bacteria took over again in about another week, resulting in further tests and questions about what artificial body parts I had. I was on IV antibiotics for a total of about 10 weeks that time, and stayed negative for 6 weeks of testing and another 2.5 months, and then it re-energized again. So back in (another) hospital for about 11 days (until blood cultures came back negative), another six weeks of IV antibiotics at home and now oral antibiotics for life is the plan. (I had TEE's twice to look at the artificial valve - and nothing was seen.) A 'radioactive' PET Scan in November showed that it is most likely that the bacteria has attached to the dacron tube that replaced the ascending aorta, but there are differing opinions. I am sharing this here in the hope that it will be helpful to someone else. I can't offer preventive advice (which is always my goal) - as I have no idea how/why this happened, but I can share that it did happen, and if it has happened to others - you are not alone. A