And Then One Day...

And Then One Day...

Hello, my name is Steve Goforth and my family and friends have told me that I should start writing a blog. Well here I am…problem is that I do not know what a blog is. I am 37 and a firefighter and have missed some of the social developments that have arrived with the explosion of the internet. I am hip enough to have heard of blogging, but old enough not to understand. My children are still young but I believe that would put me in the “dorky old dad” box that I remember putting my father in not so many years ago. To the best of my knowledge I will be writing about my life and what has recently happened to me that has changed it forever as a definite huge fricking arrow in the timeline of my life.

This story tells you about a guy who was living his professional dream as a Firefighter/Paramedic with a beautiful wife and two young boys to a guy who needs a heart transplant to survive.
It happened really fast. I had had a cough for a while; I went to the doctor a week before the rug got pulled out from under me to complain about the cough. As a firefighter I come in contact with plenty of sick and flu people and wanted to get checked. They told me that my lungs were clear and come back if it got worse.
On the fourth of Jan I took my kid Baylor, who is six, night skiing at Stevens pass. I felt fine. No problem, good times. Next day I was at work. Long day, a few sick people and a small apartment fire at the end. After the fire I continued to cough and my partner actually gave me a cough drop cause I was keeping him up. Mind you this was at 5 am when we were trying to get a couple z’s before we went got our wake up tones at 7 am.
Went home and we had a birthday party for another kid to go to and I was beat. I told Julie (my wife) that I was going to go on a run to get the blood pumping so I could get through the day and maybe nap later. I was really getting back into my running routine because I had been training for the Columbia Center Stairclimb for Leukemia that was coming up. 69 floors in full bunker gear and a breathing mask. The words of wisdom in the fire service are “do not eat more than your mask will hold.” I did not want to chunder in front of the fellas and take crap from the fellas for the rest of my career.
Anyhow, I started my run and could not get going. I had to stop every 25 feet or so. Not feeling good and phlegm building up in the through that needed a clearing. Problem is that when I spit it up it was blood and not phlegm.
Crap I thought, I have pneumonia, I thought. I sure hope it is not TB. That is the thought of every public servant who sees someone who is coughing blood. We get tested every year.
I had some antibiotics so I took them and waited until Monday and went to the clinic. I wanted them to treat my pneumonia. The nurse felt my pulse and it was “funky”, took my blood pressure and it was low. Hooked me up to the monitor and my heart tracing was not looking good. It was irregular and I was throwing lots of “funky” beats.
X-ray showed an enlarged heart. I was told that I needed an immediate echocardiogram. This showed me with heart failure and an ejection fraction of 38%, it is supposed to be 60-70%. This tells you how much of your blood is pumped through.
I was scheduled for an immediate consult with the cardiologist that afternoon. He told me that this was either a serious condition that would require a transplant or a virus that would clear up. He could not know for sure unless he did an angiogram to check the arteries.
This was quite a meal to digest in one day. I called my wife and she was there in minutes. I hoped for the best because what could be that wrong with me, I was a healthy guy.
Things did not get better. I got worse. I would hurt all day and puke all night. I would call my cardiologist and was told to go to the clinic or the ER if I was sick. The ER would not admit me cause the condition could be handled outpatient. The docs at the walk in clinic told me that I needed to see a cardiologist.
Finally one night I told Julie that if this was the cure than I would rather be dead. That is when Julie called the medics at Everett and told them about what was going on. It was my shift and Julie knew the crew I worked with. I had been off for a few weeks and was working in the office telling everybody that I would be fine. Nobody really believed it because I did not look that good.
They had Marysville come and get me. I went to Colby. We made a quick decision to go to Seattle. I went to Harborview where I had trained as a Medic the year before. I don’t remember the next week. Julie is an EMT and knew that what the docs were doing was trying to stabilize me. I was in organ failure. I was sick enough with an ineffective heart that did not pump the blood that my organs were shutting down. Not a good thing. They had me pretty sedated so I remember friends and family being there but it was really fuzzy. I knew I was sick because they would look at me and then look at the monitor. There was a lot of concern in their face and not a lot of joke cracking that usually happens when the guys come to see you.
Next thing I remember is that I was at the UW and they had me on a balloon pump. It was hooked up to my aorta and would block it for the blood to build up and then release to let it flow. It build up pressure like when you put your thumb on a garden hose for a minute and then release.
Anyhow, I felt good because I had blood going to my brain and all other vital organs. There had been some question about just how much blood had ever been perfusing to my brain based on some of the decisions I had made.
I could not sit up and was stuck in bed. The doctors came to see me all the time. I was pretty popular (i.e. sick). Not long after I got there the doc came in and said “Steve, you heart is not working and you need a heart transplant.” Boom, that was it. No foreplay, no dinner, not even the exchanging of emails, I was immediately at the top of the list of potentially sick dudes. I do not know what my exact reaction was but I know I did not feel good about this one.