Our Story

In August 2019, I woke up with severe stomach pains, thinking that I had food poisoning, I drove myself to the Hospital because the pain was bad enough to keep me awake but not so bad that I thought something was life-threatening. The ER did their routine test and labs, and initially, there were no apparent signs of anything life-threatening. That was until the ER doctor read my CT Scan. After sitting for a while, a different doctor came and introduced himself. He said that I had an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm. He also said I had an aneurysm in my common Iliac artery and left Iliac artery.   He stated that since the aneurysm was saccular, meaning bulging on one side and not the other. He was concerned that the artery was about to rupture. Think of a bubble in the sidewall of your tire. You can get a couple of miles out of it, but if you don't fix your tire will explode. 

I called my wife, and she rushed to the ER, we talked with the doctor, and I was prepped for Surgery. I went to the Hospital at 6 AM and was in the OR by 10:00 AM. As I was being wheeled down to the OR, I kissed my wife and told her I would see her in 1 and 1/2 hours because that was how long the Dr said it should take. When I woke up from Surgery, the first person I saw was my eight-year-old son, and I remember thinking, we live 40 minutes away from the Hospital. How did my wife get home, get him, and get back in time? It was then I found out that I was in Surgery for over 10 hours.

While the Dr was operating, he knew something wasn't right. He described it by saying that my arteries were like wet paper. They were super fragile. The more they tried to repair my arteries, the more they would get damaged. They struggled to get my pulse back in my left leg, but after hours of working on me, they finally got a faint pulse and brought me to ICU. I was out of the Hospital for a few days, but two weeks later, I was back in for another emergency surgery. During my original Surgery, in attempt to get my pulse back in my foot, they put a balloon down my femoral artery. The balloon caused another aneurysm that they did not know at the time. Luckily my body had a way of telling me something was wrong, and my leg started to hurt badly, prompting me to return to the ER before that artery Ruptured. 

After my second surgery, my doctor recommended that I get genetic testing for a connective tissue disorder and his assumptions were correct. It turned out that I have a mutation in my COL3A gene, the gene that is responsible for making the collagen that makes up our Organs and Aterys Because VEDS is hereditary we got my son tested and his test did come back positive for VEDS, as well as my brother.  

After learning about VEDS we took a look back at our family history, and we realized that if there were more education and awareness, we would have discovered this sooner and my dad may be alive today.  My Dads brother died after getting an angiocath to locate abdominal pain . He later passed away from an internal bleed from his aorta at 49, My Dads sister, had a stroke at 30, which at the time the doctors contributed to smoking and birth control pills, she then died at age 49 from... you guessed it an aortic aneurysm rupture, 

WARNING: I am about to get graphic. My dad passed away at 53 from an automobile accident. Although the official report was blunt for trauma, the incident occurred because my dad was unconscious. 

While the police stated he possibly fell asleep at the wheel, my family and I disagreed.  We feel the lack of blood would indicate that his heart was not pumping because he was not wearing a seatbelt and got into a head-on collision at over 50 mph and the only blood was a tiny spec on the steering wheel. We thought it was a heart attack at the time of his death.  

Looking back, we feel confident that he had an aortic rupture because we later found out from his girlfriend that he was complaining of stomach pain took a bunch of tums, and stated to her that he had the worst heartburn he had ever felt.