Through Bypass and 17 Stents, Patient Still Upbeat

COURT HOUSE — A former employee at Burdette Tomlin (now Cape Regional Medical Center) and heart patient for the past 11 years wants to caution Cape May County residents to stop smoking, start dieting and exercising.
Patricia Carter, a retired staffing coordinator at the hospital, has had double bypass heart surgery, over 30 cardiac catheterizations and 17 stents placed in her cardiac arteries to keep the blood vessels open.
“It started in when I was 48 years old. I didn’t take very good care of myself and I started experiencing chest pain,” Carter told the Herald. “I got my first stent that year.”
Stent’s are wire metal mesh tubes used to prop open arteries during angioplasty to prevent blockages. Carter has stents in all three of her main cardiac arteries: right coronary, left anterior descending and left circumflex arteries. Her procedures have each taken from between two and six hours, Carter said.
Her heart bypass surgery was originally scheduled for Sept. 11, 2001, but the surgery was reschedule after the terrorist attacks that day.
“I’ll never forget where I was that day,” Carter said.
Carter has had intermittent bouts of shortness of breath, pain down her right arm and chest pain or angina since then. She tried to deal with the pain for a week or so, but then checked herself into the emergency room. After observation, she was transferred to University of Pennsylvania for a procedure.
This has happened countless times over the past several years.
“It’s been a long fight, but I try to keep upbeat,” Carter said. “I don’t think I could have done it without my docs. They’ve been with me the whole time. They keep me going. I always get hugs from them.”
Carter’s physicians include Dr. Subhash Mehta, her primary care doctor; Dr. Suketu Nanavati, her cardiologist; and Dr. Vidya Banka, her surgeon who has performed all of her catheterizations and stents.
She said the entire Cape Regional staff also treats her “like a VIP” whenever she’s there for treatment. Carter’s significant other, Bill Cooney, agreed that her doctors and nurses have always treated great.
Formerly of Ocean City and now living in Tuckerton, Carter said she was last in Cape Regional about a month ago.
“They kept me for five days and gave me morphine and Ativan for the pain,” she said. “After working there and being treated there for so long, it’s like a second home for me.”
Nanavati calls Carter his “miracle child.”
“She’s in constant chest pain,” he told the Herald. “We continue to help her with different treatments and medications.”
Nanavati said Carter had some relief recently with a new procedure called Enhanced External Counterpulsation (EECP), which uses cuffs on the legs to compress the blood vessels and push blood back towards the heart. EECP has been shown to relieve angina.
Carter agreed that her chest pain eased up following the treatment. She said the procedure was extensive requiring her to undergo the treatment for an hour a day, five days a week for over a month. Nanavati said the EECP treatments have also been successful to non-cardiac surgery patients as well.
Also a diabetic, Carter takes 26 daily medications and has a permanent port in her chest for injections. Her last stent procedure was about a year ago, she said.
After all of this pain and these treatments, Carter said her tests always come back fine. She’s never had a heart attack.
“But I’m always thinking whenever the pain comes back that this will be the time,” she said. “It’s just a matter of time. Eventually the big one will come.”
Carter and her doctors will continue to stave off that possibility. Carter said she wants to get into a cardiac rehabilitation program, eat better and start exercising regularly.
In the meantime, Carter wanted to tell those afraid of catheterization and stent procedures not to worry.
“If I’ve made it through 30 procedures and 17 stents,” she said. “They can make it too.”
Contact Hart at (609) 886-8600 Ext 35 or at: jhart@cmcherald.com