Unexpected Diagnosis Thanks to an Apple Watch: How a Pericardiectomy Saved a Life
Hey Hey Heart Buddies and Happy New Year!
Season 5 of Open Heart Surgery with Boots is here. Wow. Thank you for being along for the ride that is this life and this podcast.
I had the honor of interviewing Jeremy Rothenberg who shares his incredible journey, which began with an Apple Watch alert and ended in a life-changing open-heart surgery. Jeremy reveals what it’s like to go from feeling healthy and fit to confronting a shocking diagnosis (cirrhosis of the liver) and managing the whirlwind of emotions that follow. We explore his advice on regulating the nervous system, his candid recount of his surgery, and his inspiring post-op accomplishments. Whether you're curious about heart health, or you're in need of motivation to tackle life’s challenges, this episode offers a raw and uplifting narrative that will leave you pondering the preciousness of each heartbeat.
I wish I lived closer to Jeremy. He is such a light. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Read about and get in touch with Jeremy here.
Boots Knighton has been an educator since the late 1990s in all facets of education including high school science, middle school mathematics, elementary reading, college level ecology, ski instruction, backpacking, and experiential education. Her greatest teacher has been her heart thanks to a surprise diagnosis in 2020 (during the pandemic) of three different congenital heart defects. She is now thriving after her open-heart surgery on January 15, 2021 and is on a mission to raise awareness through her podcast, The Heart Chamber: patient stories of open-heart surgery and recovery, that heart surgery can be an incredible opportunity to begin again in life and live life wide open.
Transcript
When she said that, a light bulb went off in my mind because in
Speaker:1990, 34 years ago now,
Speaker:I had a case of acute pericarditis, which meant
Speaker:that my pericardium, which is the sac that surrounds your heart and
Speaker:protects your heart, became inflamed, probably from a
Speaker:virus. We don't know. I was traveling. I was on
Speaker:an overnight train in Spain, coming from. I had been in
Speaker:Morocco, and while trying to sleep, my chest started
Speaker:to close down, my breathing started to get painful,
Speaker:and so I hopped off the bed and I walked back and forth in
Speaker:the train like I would do if I was spinning
Speaker:from too much alcohol or something and just try to bear down and get
Speaker:through it. But it just kept getting worse and worse.
Speaker:Hello, and welcome back to another episode
Speaker:of Open Heart Surgery with Boots. Oh, my gosh.
Speaker:We are coming up on the two year anniversary of when I even had
Speaker:this idea of starting a podcast for open
Speaker:heart surgery. And hilariously, I didn't even listen to
Speaker:podcasts, and it just kind of came to me like this
Speaker:existential nudge. And here
Speaker:I am two years later, and what you don't
Speaker:see is Michael Mori, who is my engineer in the
Speaker:background, who helps me edit these episodes.
Speaker:And I think I'm making his job easier because I'm saying less
Speaker:ums. So thank you for sticking with
Speaker:me all this time and thank you for continuing to come back.
Speaker:Please do consider supporting this podcast on Patreon. You
Speaker:can find the links in the show notes. This is definitely not
Speaker:done for free, and I have been so happy and
Speaker:honored to keep this podcast going. But it does feel
Speaker:good when I see support coming from willing
Speaker:donors. And if you sign up for the second or third
Speaker:tier, then you get to be a part of the Zoom community, which
Speaker:I'm just now getting going. So be sure to go check that out. And
Speaker:you will absolutely make my year if you become a Patreon
Speaker:supporter. But, oh, my goodness. Enough jabbering.
Speaker:Let's get to today's episode with Jeremy Rothenberg. Jeremy,
Speaker:welcome. You're coming to us from Ashland, Oregon,
Speaker:and I could not be more tickled to have you. And you
Speaker:are, my gosh, I think my second or third friend that I've made actually
Speaker:through substack, so substack for the win.
Speaker:Nice. Jeremy, will you please introduce
Speaker:yourself and kind of set the scene of, like, who you are,
Speaker:what you're about. You have overcome an incredible
Speaker:story that I have never heard of before. So I'm even more excited
Speaker:about that. I mean, I'm not Excited about what happened to you, but I'm excited
Speaker:to have your story on the podcast. But first, set the
Speaker:scene of who Jeremy Rothenberg is. Oh, thank you.
Speaker:So happy to be here and talk to you after listening to you for so
Speaker:long. Who I am. I am an
Speaker:acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist, and I'm
Speaker:also a wellness coach. I sometimes call myself an
Speaker:executive wellness coach because I work with executives
Speaker:and creative professionals and mostly in the tech industry. We're. Once
Speaker:upon a time, I used to work and I live in
Speaker:Ashland, Oregon. Moved here about six years ago
Speaker:from Oakland, the Bay Area and California, where
Speaker:I had an acupuncture practice for 10 years and before that
Speaker:did about 15 years doing various types of producing and
Speaker:product managing in the. In the. In the tech industry. Yeah. Do you want me
Speaker:to go on from there or. Well, I just gotta say, that's quite the
Speaker:pivot. Yeah. Well, this. This all plays.
Speaker:Plays nicely in, in this whole story. Just very briefly
Speaker:on that. You know, working in that world, I
Speaker:felt that I wasn't really doing what I was meant to
Speaker:be doing in life. Even though I liked it. It was. It was fun,
Speaker:smart people. I was making a good amount of money. I always felt drained,
Speaker:and I always felt like I was losing energy rather than gaining
Speaker:energy. And at one point, I had an
Speaker:experience where I started having panic attacks after
Speaker:having my heart starting to skip a beat.
Speaker:So one day. I'll just tell a quick story. One day I was
Speaker:working a small job as a favor for my
Speaker:cousin over the Christmas holiday, and I was
Speaker:qaing back then, what was CD
Speaker:ROMs know like
Speaker:for? Yeah, and. And it was such a. It was
Speaker:such a repetitive job that I really wasn't that happy
Speaker:about doing, but I was. I was doing it anyway. And I. My. I felt
Speaker:my heart started to skip beats and it.
Speaker:It like threw me into a panic attack. Why? Because weeks before
Speaker:that, I had just come home from visiting my father on the
Speaker:east coast after he had quintuple bypass
Speaker:surgery with Dr. Oz. And yes, it's
Speaker:that Dr. Oz what he was back. Back then when he
Speaker:was still a top cardiac surgeon in New York
Speaker:before he became the character that you know him as.
Speaker:And my father had quintuple bypass surgery, which is
Speaker:like, I think as many as you can possibly have. And I had these
Speaker:skipped beats and suddenly something came in my mind that something was wrong with
Speaker:my heart. And I had these panic attacks which led
Speaker:to me working briefly with an energy healer
Speaker:who set me completely at ease Set my
Speaker:heart completely at ease. And I realized, you know what,
Speaker:two things here. One, I have to learn to do what he did.
Speaker:And number two, I have to do what I know that I'm supposed to be
Speaker:doing in life, which is helping people and working directly
Speaker:with the mind and the body rather than on
Speaker:these interactive products, you know, that I, that I was
Speaker:working on for in the tech industry. That was the beginning of this
Speaker:story, to be quite honest, because it will come back, we'll come back to understand
Speaker:that those immediate, those skipped beats were a
Speaker:result of something that led to the surgery that I had last
Speaker:year. And I'm still stuck on Dr. Oz. I honestly forgot
Speaker:he was, he was. Actually a top
Speaker:surgeon, I believe, at Columbia Presbyterian
Speaker:in New York City. I'm gonna have to dig into that separately.
Speaker:He. He really. Okay, that's for another time.
Speaker:That's. Yeah. So it's just an interesting thing. Yeah.
Speaker:So, okay, yeah, you've set the scene, but like, give us the
Speaker:big overarching picture of. Well, first of all, how old are
Speaker:you? So I'm 55 years old now. That was
Speaker:back in 2001 or
Speaker:2002, when I first started feeling these
Speaker:heart related symptoms that I just.
Speaker:And I had those checked out and they were checked out to be normal. They
Speaker:were called PVCs, premature ventricular contractions.
Speaker:People have them. It wasn't considered an
Speaker:issue. It was only, only looking back 20 years now that I
Speaker:realized that maybe they had something to do with this issue
Speaker:of my pericardium. Yeah. Which, which. That's the great
Speaker:segue into giving us the big picture of. Give us
Speaker:the 50,000 foot view. And then we're going to go back and connect
Speaker:some dots and help the listeners understand your
Speaker:process. Yeah. So last year, well, In
Speaker:August of 2023, I was
Speaker:diagnosed with liver cirrhosis, which
Speaker:was as astonishing as it could possibly be because I didn't
Speaker:have any symptoms of liver
Speaker:cirrhosis. And I was only
Speaker:investigating my liver because
Speaker:a year before that I started having atrial
Speaker:fibrillation. And atrial fibrillation is when the atrium of your
Speaker:heart start to beat wildly. And
Speaker:it's usually not a life threatening situation, but
Speaker:it can cause blood clots, which can cause stroke. So there
Speaker:is concern about it. I tripped into
Speaker:atrial fibrillation two weeks before my daughter's bat
Speaker:mitzvah in, in 2023
Speaker:and didn't come out of it for three
Speaker:months. Because I live in a small town, I
Speaker:couldn't get to see a cardiologist for Three months. And because
Speaker:I was in pretty good shape, it didn't really affect me that much. The only
Speaker:reason why I knew that I had the atrial fibrillation is because my apple watch
Speaker:told me I did. You know, it alerted me and said, you have atrial fibrillation.
Speaker:I started measuring everything and I realized, oh, my. My
Speaker:resting heart rate is now 30 beats above what it was
Speaker:before. And when I exercise, everything goes about 30 beats higher
Speaker:than it did before. So I ha. I eventually had to get a
Speaker:cardio version, which is a shock, like a defibrillator, but in a,
Speaker:you know, in a surgical environment. And I did that.
Speaker:January 2024. And that's reset my heart
Speaker:rhythm. And that was great. And I talked to my cardiologist and I said,
Speaker:hey, many years ago, I was tested for life
Speaker:insurance, and they came back with the blood test,
Speaker:and everything was normal except this one liver enzyme called
Speaker:ggt, which they normally don't test for. But when
Speaker:it's high, mine was kind of off the charts high. When it's high, it can
Speaker:signal that you might be an alcoholic or you might have some, like,
Speaker:bile duct issues. So the life insurance people are.
Speaker:That's. They cut you out. And I was shocked about that.
Speaker:And I talked for. To doctors, any doctor I would see over the next
Speaker:bunch of years, I would ask about that. And they all kind of shrugged their
Speaker:shoulders and they're like, well, if everything else is normal, your alt ast,
Speaker:the other liver enzymes, which are normally checked, they're normal. It's probably just
Speaker:who you are. You probably just have a weird GGT level. And so
Speaker:I went on with my life. Never didn't really think about it too
Speaker:much. But I asked my cardiologist at this point, I said, you know, I
Speaker:have this high GGT thing. Could this have anything to do with my atrial
Speaker:fibrillation? And she said, well, she didn't know. She did some
Speaker:tests, came back, everything came back negative. She sent, then sent
Speaker:me to a GI people, and I had coordinated
Speaker:my cardio version to be at the beginning of the year so that I could
Speaker:use up my deductible immediately so that I could,
Speaker:you know, use my insurance that year as much as possible. And so
Speaker:my deductible was up. I said, okay, I'll go do a bunch of lab tests.
Speaker:That's fine. And so I went to see a GI person,
Speaker:went through all these lab tests. Some of them started coming back a little off.
Speaker:Had an ultrasound of the liver or of the
Speaker:abdomen. And that said, like, you know, there were some blood flow issues in the
Speaker:liver, so we did something called a
Speaker:elastography ultrasound, which measures the. The
Speaker:flexibility and the density of, of an organ. So
Speaker:that was. Say that again, slower elast.
Speaker:Elastography, like elastic
Speaker:elastography. I've never heard of that. I hadn't
Speaker:either. And. And that comes back with a scale of
Speaker:zero to four for liver fibrosis, four
Speaker:being cirrhosis. Liver cirrhosis. Mine came back at
Speaker:four. And I remember, you know, reading that
Speaker:result at my kitchen table and just my jaw
Speaker:dropping to the floor. This is weeks after a very, very
Speaker:close friend of mine died from cancer. And I was like,
Speaker:wow, my turn. And
Speaker:that was shocking. Absolutely shocking roller coaster
Speaker:because why would you have liver cirrhosis?
Speaker:Right? I was not an alcoholic. I generally
Speaker:eat a, you know, healthy, generally low carb
Speaker:diet. There's no way I had a fatty liver or anything like that.
Speaker:So we assumed that it must be like some kind of autoimmune
Speaker:disease. We checked for autoimmune hepatitis,
Speaker:hepatitis, anything under the sun. All of it came back a little
Speaker:inconclusive, but mostly, mostly negative.
Speaker:And interestingly, where I live. Right, you don't. The. What
Speaker:I found out is you have a certain level of medical availability
Speaker:here, and then there's a certain level that you have to travel for. There are
Speaker:no hepatologists, which is a liver specialist in the Rogue
Speaker:Valley, where I live, at all. So when I got this diagnosis,
Speaker:I, I remembered that a close friend of mine worked in liver
Speaker:transplant at UCSF in California, in San Francisco. And so
Speaker:I contacted her. She quickly had me contact
Speaker:a hepatologist that she worked with. And I didn't have out
Speaker:of network insurance. I could only stay in Oregon. This woman, Dr.
Speaker:Lai, she is kind of my savior. She. She consulted with
Speaker:me for free, and she thought about
Speaker:it. She, you know, looked at the results of everything that I had. And she
Speaker:said, you know, there seems to be some kind of issue
Speaker:with blood flow. You really should have your heart
Speaker:checked for pressures. It could be something
Speaker:like constrictive pericarditis or something
Speaker:in that realm. And when she said that,
Speaker:it, it, it, you know, a light bulb went off in
Speaker:my mind because in 1990,
Speaker:34 years ago now, I had a case of
Speaker:acute pericarditis, which meant that my
Speaker:pericardium, which is the sac that surrounds your heart and protects your heart,
Speaker:became inflamed, probably from a virus.
Speaker:We don't know. I was traveling an overnight train in Spain,
Speaker:coming from. I had been In Morocco. And while
Speaker:trying to sleep, my chest started to close down, my
Speaker:breathing started to get painful, and so I hopped
Speaker:off the bed and I walked back and forth in the train
Speaker:like I would do if I was, you know, spinning from too much alcohol or
Speaker:something and just try to bear down and get through it. But it just kept
Speaker:getting worse and worse. So we got off the train prematurely in
Speaker:Barcelona, went to a hospital, and that's where
Speaker:eventually they discovered that I had what they
Speaker:said was acute pericarditis. I'd never heard of that before. And they said they
Speaker:couldn't really do anything but give me ibuprofen and rest.
Speaker:And eventually left the hospital, went home to New York.
Speaker:This was. I was so fatigued after that for a few weeks.
Speaker:It was. It was really monumental thing. I remember very, very clearly. But
Speaker:after that, I forgot about it. Hmm. Completely forgot about. Didn't.
Speaker:Didn't follow up with any Doctors. I was 21 years
Speaker:old. And so the rest of my life up
Speaker:until now, what probably happened was the inflammation
Speaker:and the response to the inflammation started to calcify the
Speaker:pericardium, harden it to. To what that the surgeon
Speaker:would describe as bone level
Speaker:calcification. No way. And,
Speaker:yeah, it's like breaking it off, you know, like, and
Speaker:literally cracking it off of my heart. Some of it was
Speaker:so. Was. Was deeply intertwined
Speaker:with the heart muscle, and so that part couldn't come off. So
Speaker:this is now we're talking about your open heart surgery? That's right.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the. So she.
Speaker:She was like. I emailed her back and said,
Speaker:wow, you know, I had this thing, cute pair card is. And
Speaker:she. And she responded to me. She was like, wow. I was. I was even
Speaker:a little hesitant to say that to you because it was such an out there,
Speaker:even know, kind of textbook diagnosis that you would do in a. In
Speaker:a class or something like that. It's not something you really see in. In
Speaker:reality. And you know, from there that was. There
Speaker:were a bunch of tests had to happen. After that, we had all my
Speaker:care moved up to OHSU in Portland, you know, where I had
Speaker:a catheterization to check the pressures in the heart. I had a
Speaker:heart MRI to, you know,
Speaker:to really just make sure that this was what was going on.
Speaker:And the only treatment for it is surgery, which is
Speaker:a. Called a pericardiectomy. Okay, so hang on.
Speaker:Before we get to the pericardiectomy, when you did
Speaker:all those heart tests in Portland, did they all
Speaker:show that your. Your heart needed some serious Help. They all
Speaker:showed exactly what she said. Constrictive
Speaker:pericarditis. So what it is, if you think about it,
Speaker:it's just instead of that pericardium being flexible
Speaker:and when your heart beats it, it moves with it. It's
Speaker:now hard, so your heart doesn't have as much
Speaker:space to open and close. Okay.
Speaker:So what it does, what you see on a
Speaker:catheterization, from my understanding, is you see
Speaker:a certain pressure signal so that when the beat comes in and goes
Speaker:out, normal thing would run rise and fall in a particular way,
Speaker:and this would rise and fall in a different way. And they call that
Speaker:like a square root sign. And it, you know, mine
Speaker:was textbook. That. Very clearly
Speaker:that. And also the, the, the MRI very
Speaker:clearly showed this calcification. Also,
Speaker:years ago, because I have a lot of heart issues
Speaker:in my family, I had what's called a calcium test,
Speaker:which is a CT scan that everybody should actually have.
Speaker:It's very inexpensive, it's not covered by insurance, but it
Speaker:costs a couple hundred dollars, maybe two or three hundred dollars, and it tells you
Speaker:about the calcification in your arteries and it gives you a sense of, like,
Speaker:how dangerous your situation is, you know, for, for heart
Speaker:disease in general. But the, the cardiologist who I met in,
Speaker:at OHSU in Portland showed me the pictures from that calcium
Speaker:test, which nobody had showed me the years before that I had taken
Speaker:it. He said, yeah, there's some calcium in your arteries, but look at the, look
Speaker:at your pericardium. It was, it was thickened and it was.
Speaker:The calcium was all, all in there. And nobody had
Speaker:ever said anything about that to me. Was it in the report?
Speaker:It said, in the report, it said something like, yeah,
Speaker:pericardial calcifications, but didn't say it in any way
Speaker:that made it sound dangerous. That I had a. I
Speaker:think I had an echocardiogram 20 years ago
Speaker:that also came back with some pericardial
Speaker:calcification. Nobody ever made a
Speaker:deal about it. I never thought about it until now. So all of the, all
Speaker:of the tests were very clear in suggesting this is what it
Speaker:was. You're not the first person, and even myself,
Speaker:everyone I've had the honor and privilege of interviewing for this
Speaker:podcast. Almost every single person, if they
Speaker:do read their report, you know, the report is usually not
Speaker:sounding alarms. It's just reporting facts of what the radiologist
Speaker:sees. But then the cardiologist
Speaker:usually doesn't get excited
Speaker:or is overly incentivized to, to
Speaker:educate us on what is found in a Radiology report. And so
Speaker:what I always say, and I think you would agree here, it's
Speaker:don't take our doctor's word for it, like go back and read our own
Speaker:reports and then ask questions. You know, like, Dr.
Speaker:Google can get us into trouble and it can
Speaker:dysregulate us. So you need to be able to go and
Speaker:like research what these terms mean from like a grounded,
Speaker:calm nervous system. Because there can be things on
Speaker:Dr. Google that can be scary. So it's a fine line
Speaker:of, of educating ourselves, but then not overly educating
Speaker:and jump to the conclusion that we're going to die tomorrow.
Speaker:Well, let me tell you about chat, Dr. Chatgpt.
Speaker:Ah. Because what I did with all of my test
Speaker:results that came in is I fed them into this AI chatgpt
Speaker:and it would, it would come back with like all the, like
Speaker:act very specific recommendations about
Speaker:what this could possibly be. Right? So when you look things up on Google,
Speaker:obviously you get these very broad issues,
Speaker:right? You could be dying from this, that and the other thing.
Speaker:ChatGPT like looks at the lab tests and say, well, these lab tests suggest
Speaker:that it could be this or it could be that. And then, you know, put
Speaker:more, put more information and more information, more information. So it
Speaker:definitely helped me push my local GI
Speaker:to help me get a liver biopsy, which she was
Speaker:actually weirdly reticent to do
Speaker:because it kept telling me, you know, you might have cirrhosis, you
Speaker:might not. The, the elastography is not the, the last
Speaker:word on this. The gold standard is to get a piece of your
Speaker:liver basically, and, and see what that says. And so we did that.
Speaker:The good. Yeah, the good news with that just, by the way, is that
Speaker:that came back a step lower than cirrhosis. That came back
Speaker:saying I had maybe like level three as opposed to four,
Speaker:which still bad, but not really on the edge of liver
Speaker:failure, which I was thought it might be for a few weeks.
Speaker:Right. Wow. Well, thanks for connecting the dots. And so,
Speaker:yeah, bring us to the day of heart surgery. Like, this is just
Speaker:amazing. So here you are in Portland. Yeah, so I would. So I
Speaker:drove back. So Portland's about four and a half hour drive from where I live.
Speaker:I went up and back to Portland probably six
Speaker:times in, you know, a few months to meet with
Speaker:the first with the cardiologist, then with the surgeon,
Speaker:then with the surgeon again. I was a little afraid
Speaker:to have the surgery at ohsu because
Speaker:pericardiectomies are very rare or somewhat
Speaker:rare. So even at a place like ohsu where
Speaker:they do heart transplants, they only do a handful of
Speaker:pericardiectomies a year. So I was looking
Speaker:to, I was talking to the Mayo Clinic, I was
Speaker:talking to the Cleveland Clinic. These places do
Speaker:them on a regular basis. This would require me to get
Speaker:different insurance. So I was going to have to wait till the, after
Speaker:the beginning of the year after my catheterization,
Speaker:which was in November, they called
Speaker:me somewhere around Thanksgiving and said,
Speaker:you know, surgery, we're scheduling you for surgery on the 12th of
Speaker:December, which was like two weeks away, you know, a little more than two weeks
Speaker:away. And, and I had been investigating these other
Speaker:path. So I really, I was a little nervous. But on the way
Speaker:to. From my last consult with Dr. Tobias,
Speaker:who was my surgery surgeon, I talked to another
Speaker:doctor, Dr. Greason at the, at the Mayo Clinic, who
Speaker:is like one of the foremost surgeons for this type of surgery
Speaker:in the country. And he was very kind, very generous with his time
Speaker:and, and, you know, led me to understand,
Speaker:after peppering him with as many questions as I could, that I
Speaker:was going to be okay at OHSU with, with this doctor.
Speaker:And then that was, that was just a week before
Speaker:the surgery. I met with that doctor again, asked him a few more questions,
Speaker:and then we were a go for surgery. The same year that
Speaker:I had the cardioversion
Speaker:to start with. Luckily for me, this, you know,
Speaker:from an insurance point of view, I had already reached my out of pocket maximum.
Speaker:This surgery was now going to be paid for. And then it was just
Speaker:preparing for surgery. And, and I had already been doing that a bit by
Speaker:listening to your podcast, which I found extremely helpful to,
Speaker:you know, to, to listen to other people's stories, your
Speaker:story, and understand how people prepare and
Speaker:what could happen afterwards. Some of which on your story
Speaker:was, was concerning and, you know, the wires
Speaker:is what. Is what comes to mind, having to
Speaker:have those taken out. And then I also downloaded
Speaker:these on the request of my stepmother who was
Speaker:with my father at that Dr. Oz surgery. She told me about
Speaker:these guided meditations. I'll have to
Speaker:look up that one's name. But I did these guided meditations
Speaker:about, you know, the week or two before
Speaker:the surgery, which just were all about getting the nervous
Speaker:system to relax, to trust the
Speaker:surgery and the surgical team. Her name is Bella Ruth.
Speaker:Oh, yep. I use Bella Ruth Nappersteck as well. She's quite the name.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those were, those were really
Speaker:profound for some people. Might be a little New agey
Speaker:sounding and it's very soothing kind of thing. But from. I found that to
Speaker:be quite remarkable. I went into the
Speaker:surgery as calm as I could possibly be. I
Speaker:really had. I surrendered to the whole thing, which is
Speaker:a practice that I, you know, work with people on in my, in my own
Speaker:coaching practice, which is radical acceptance and
Speaker:surrender, which is just recognizing this is happening now
Speaker:I can either resist it, you know, and suffer, or
Speaker:I can let go into it and, you know, let
Speaker:my body handle it. Yeah. So that, that
Speaker:led up to the 12th of December in 2023, which is
Speaker:when I had seven hour surgery and I was on the five
Speaker:hours. Yeah, they got to go in there
Speaker:and scrape this thing off piece by piece all around your
Speaker:heart, you know. You know, what I'm envisioning right now
Speaker:is like a raw egg and
Speaker:the surgeon's trying to chip away at just the shell because you say it
Speaker:was so calcified and then the yolk is your heart.
Speaker:That's exactly it. That's exactly it. So when.
Speaker:So on the heart by heart lung bypass machine, you know, the heart stops
Speaker:so it's easier to do that. But obviously there's dangers being on the heart
Speaker:bypass machine. And that was some of the stuff I was very concerned about because
Speaker:yeah, there's post surgical issues with
Speaker:cognitive pump head. They call it pump head.
Speaker:Okay. Yeah. So I was afraid of all of that and it went
Speaker:off without a hitch, I guess. And you know, here I am,
Speaker:obviously to tell the story, dude, seven
Speaker:hours. I think seven hours. Besides my dad,
Speaker:my dad's quintuple bypass was eight hours. And I think
Speaker:you're now my like, yeah, you're. You win number number two
Speaker:for, sorry, really long heart surgeries. Geez.
Speaker:I just, I'm just taking a minute to take all that in because it. I
Speaker:have so many questions, but it's just a lot to take in.
Speaker:Thank you to your liver for letting us know that you needed
Speaker:help for sure. And thank you to that amazing hepatologist that
Speaker:helped you connect the dots. And thank you to you who was
Speaker:incessant in asking questions and not
Speaker:accepting, you know, these answers that didn't resonate with
Speaker:you. And I think that's a really big.
Speaker:I'm taking so much away from our conversation today already. But
Speaker:that's. That just continues to drive home for me and
Speaker:hopefully those listening that like our intuitions are
Speaker:everything. We are in the driver's seat of our health
Speaker:care and if something doesn't feel right, we have
Speaker:the right to continue to pursue
Speaker:other avenues. And that's what you did, thankfully. A hundred
Speaker:percent. Yeah, 100%. And. And from this
Speaker:experience, I recognize the, you know, the dislocated nature
Speaker:of our healthcare system. Unless you're in like a managed care facility
Speaker:of some kind like Kaiser back in California, you have
Speaker:to make some leaps sometimes between, you know, your
Speaker:local person and a specialist and then maybe,
Speaker:you know, a distant hospital, and that's on
Speaker:you. Basically. They'll make a referral, but that will just get lost
Speaker:a lot of times. And so pushing through the medical
Speaker:system gently but firmly and calling back and
Speaker:calling back and calling back, and you think you might be bothering people,
Speaker:but they're busy and they need to. They need to realize
Speaker:that, that you need help and you could slip
Speaker:through their cracks. And it's really, really important. I would just, for
Speaker:anybody listening to push pretty hard when
Speaker:you know that you need something. Yes. And I had to do the same.
Speaker:And I'm having flashbacks of
Speaker:how tiring it was to pick up
Speaker:the phone when my heart had any. Had hardly any
Speaker:juice left. I mean, it was so under oxygenated and here I'm
Speaker:still having to pound the pavement. And, you know, it was
Speaker:interesting and it doesn't seem like you had this
Speaker:mindset, but I had to really tune out my
Speaker:loved ones who said, just be patient. Wait, let them
Speaker:come to you. And I was like, no, I can tell
Speaker:I don't have much time left. And it's
Speaker:hard to find the courage, but you have
Speaker:to. To tune out what? We've kind of been
Speaker:conditioned to believe that we aren't allowed to be in the driver's
Speaker:seat, that we aren't allowed to be the squeaky wheel. But you're right.
Speaker:I mean, especially in today's health care system. Post
Speaker:Covid. Yeah, everyone's tired, everything's
Speaker:understaffed. So it really is on us
Speaker:to. To be in the driver's seat and get us to where
Speaker:we need to go. There's a difference between, you know, being
Speaker:a hypochondriac and then not knowing what you're really
Speaker:need and not knowing what's going on. But when you know
Speaker:that, that you have something going on, you need the help.
Speaker:You know, driving towards that. That help is, Is
Speaker:everything. Yes. Yes. So in the moments
Speaker:we have left, we, you, you're, you're.
Speaker:Obviously you made it through your surgery. And
Speaker:what date was your surgery? It was December 12,
Speaker:2023. Okay. Yeah. It was about six. Six weeks later,
Speaker:driving up to Ohsu to meet with the cardiologists when I
Speaker:decided that I would start Training for the Mount Ashland Hill
Speaker:climb. This half marathon thaw up a mile
Speaker:from my town to the top of Mount Ashland. Because I hadn't been.
Speaker:Nobody called me from cardiac, you know, physical therapy or
Speaker:whatever they call that. I forget. Cardiac rehab.
Speaker:Cardiac rehab. We tried a bunch of times to get in touch with them and
Speaker:I just couldn't. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to do my
Speaker:own cardiac rehab and I'm going to do this thing
Speaker:because I don't know if I'll ever be able to do it again if I
Speaker:don't do it now. And you know, that started,
Speaker:started this, this sensation and the feeling of, of time
Speaker:and life being very, very precious and, you know,
Speaker:to, to really decide what you want to do, what I want
Speaker:to do and not let fear and,
Speaker:you know, disbelief get in the way of me doing, doing things.
Speaker:So I started training for this, this thing that I would do
Speaker:six months after surgery, which I didn't know if I could actually do or would
Speaker:actually make it. But I started running in the dark
Speaker:and the cold in February. And you know, at 6:00 in the morning, I would
Speaker:go out to a track and walk around, you
Speaker:know, halfway around, stop or whatever and eventually
Speaker:maybe jog around a little bit, you know, eventually,
Speaker:week by week, day by day, working up to, to this
Speaker:big summiting of this mountain in four hours from the bottom,
Speaker:from the, from our town to the top of this mountain. It was quite, quite
Speaker:the experience. And so you did it, you, you did the half
Speaker:marathon? I did that, yeah. January, I mean, on June
Speaker:8, which was my daughter's birthday, she wasn't happy about that at all, but she
Speaker:met me up to, at the top and did the last, the last
Speaker:mile, which is the steepest mile up the ski mountain to Mount
Speaker:Ashland. And yeah, I did that. And
Speaker:I'm continuing to run and I get up in the morning still.
Speaker:Now it's getting dark again, doing, running in the dark. And that was one
Speaker:of the things I could never do before the surgery that I didn't
Speaker:know why I could never run long
Speaker:distances. And now I can do 4, 8, 10, 12
Speaker:miles without thinking about it too much. A whole new lease on
Speaker:life. It's like your heart has so much room now. It's just like,
Speaker:yes, it's totally. And I really felt that for
Speaker:a while, really. And I can still feel like I can most
Speaker:of the time feel my heart beating into my chest just because
Speaker:it has so much room now to
Speaker:expand. How has this changed you? Spiritually well, it
Speaker:has definitely given me this sense
Speaker:of the preciousness of life. Right. It's really
Speaker:just I had, you know, I worked on this
Speaker:myself in the past. I think about death
Speaker:maybe more than the average person. You know, I work in health care.
Speaker:My friend died of cancer last year.
Speaker:It has brought me even more into the
Speaker:present, into the present moment. And
Speaker:it's as though I feel like a demand on my
Speaker:system, you know, for whatever. Whatever it is that wants to be
Speaker:expressed as me, through me in this life is
Speaker:much clearer and definitely feels demanding about
Speaker:it. So there's more of me that I'm getting out of the
Speaker:way and allowing this to, to come through as clearly as
Speaker:possible. So it's like this open heart surgery is
Speaker:brought clarity. It opened my heart, you know, in a certain
Speaker:way. You know, my heart was always the guiding
Speaker:source for me, you know, when I had those skip beats, you know, 25 years
Speaker:ago or whatever, and always feeling into my heart to try to understand
Speaker:what it is that I want. And my heart was constricted,
Speaker:literally constricted. Right. And so what was that doing to me
Speaker:psychologically, what was that doing to me spiritually? It's hard to
Speaker:exactly say, but there's definitely this sense of, of
Speaker:unburdenedness and openness
Speaker:and possibility. And like I said, there's this kind of
Speaker:sense that some, you know, everything that I've thought about
Speaker:wanting to do or, you know, whether it's with work or with
Speaker:life or, you know, the community, like I, I gotta
Speaker:do, because there's not infinite amount of time
Speaker:here. What's one piece of advice
Speaker:you want to give to heart patients coming after you? Well, I would
Speaker:definitely say, you know, bottom line is we should all be regulating
Speaker:our nervous systems, you know, really, really understanding
Speaker:and working with this part of us that is
Speaker:deciding for us really whether we're safe or whether
Speaker:we're in danger and trying to get past a lot of
Speaker:what we experience as danger, which really isn't, you know, and,
Speaker:and then, and then being able over time with some
Speaker:regulation, with some strengthening, to be able to actually deal with the
Speaker:actual danger when it comes. Right. So that you don't overdo
Speaker:it. Most people, I notice,
Speaker:are overreacting in their lives to
Speaker:the just incredible amount of stimulus coming in into our
Speaker:systems every single day. All the information, you know, all the issues
Speaker:around politics or world issues and
Speaker:wars and, you know, down to our bank accounts
Speaker:and paying rent and, you know, dealing with our loved
Speaker:ones. Right. All of this stuff creates this sense that we're in
Speaker:danger and our, we're, our nervous systems are hyped up
Speaker:too, too often for too long. And so getting ourselves to
Speaker:relax, to learn how to breathe properly, to strengthen our
Speaker:bodies and to, to be able to root in, in a sense of,
Speaker:of, of peace and ease will
Speaker:help any of us not become hard patients, number one. And then if
Speaker:you are a heart patient, help, help soothe and heal.
Speaker:And when we relax, when we get that nervous system to relax, that's when our
Speaker:body repairs itself and our, our body and mind can
Speaker:connect and rejuvenate. Beautiful.
Speaker:And how do we find you? How can
Speaker:listeners find you? Because you help people with this. Yeah. So I
Speaker:work directly with people on this. You can go directly to my website,
Speaker:jeremyrothenberg.com I also have a channel on
Speaker:Insight Timer. I teach meditation, lead meditations. So
Speaker:I think that's insidetimer.com Jeremy Rothenberg and
Speaker:we can include, I guess links. I'll have all that in the show notes for
Speaker:listeners. Great. Yeah. So I offer people free
Speaker:coaching sessions when they're available and we can have
Speaker:a 30 minute talk about what's going on for you and give you some free
Speaker:coaching and see what's available for you.
Speaker:Wow. Incredible. I hope listeners will take you up on that because
Speaker:you are just an absolute joy to speak with and, and I
Speaker:so appreciate your willingness to be vulnerable and
Speaker:be seen, be heard and share your story because none
Speaker:of us have to go through this alone. And I know that
Speaker:your story of hope, inspiration and healing will help many others.
Speaker:So thank you, Jeremy. Thank you so much. It's great talking to you. I really
Speaker:enjoyed it and you've heard it here. You will find Jeremy
Speaker:Rothenberg in the show Notes. Please do consider reaching out
Speaker:to him. And if you have never used Insight Timer, I
Speaker:love it. It is such a great tool
Speaker:and there are so many different like options on there to
Speaker:listen to Jeremy. They have just like singing bowls
Speaker:and I don't know, it's like all kinds of bells and whistles that can help
Speaker:us through kind of the interesting time we find ourselves in here on
Speaker:planet Earth. So thank you so much for joining. Joining
Speaker:us today with open heart surgery with boots. Please be sure to come back next
Speaker:week. I've got another episode queued up for you.
Speaker:I know you're going to love it. Until then, I love you.
Speaker:Your heart is your best friend.
