A Piece of his Heart

There’s a fairly new surgery called the Wolf Mini-Maze that has a 90% cure rate for Atrial Fibrillation (A-Fib) and my husband had the procedure done a few days ago in Indianapolis, Indiana at the Community Heart and Vascular Hospital by Dr. Randall Wolf.  Here’s a photo of him holding a piece of his heart.  Many people have a procedure called Ablation to help with the irregular heartbeat, but typically they have to return every 5 years for another ablation.  If you’d like to read about the procedure, here’s a link.  What’s really interesting is Randy works for Atricure, the Company that developed the instruments used for the surgery, in conjunction with Dr. Wolf.  He makes the prototypes.  How cool is that!

Randy’s looking quite happy in this photo because he’s on pain medication…

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The hospital has an agreement with a number of local hotels offering patient’s families a discounted rate for their room.  I stayed at the Candlewood Suites located just a mile away and loved it.  Anyway, after the surgery Dr. Wolf handed me the small container with Randy’s left atrial appendage that’s removed during the surgery and said, “Here’s a piece of his heart”.  I took a photo of it in the hotel room and put it on Facebook for friends and family to have a look.  I thought it was pretty funny.  One of my friends said “Glad he’s doing well, but YUK!”  This photo makes it look really big and had another friend worried that they removed so much of his heart.

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