Life is pretty sweet for Jesus L. “I feel great now, and I’m happy,” he says.
You’d think the 43-year-old had found a fountain of youth.
“I’m just getting younger and younger,” Jesus says.
It’s all very different from how the married father of two from New Jersey felt in 2014. That’s the year Jesus experienced a health crisis that upended his life. Jesus was working out with mixed martial arts moves at a gym near his home when he nearly collapsed.
“I was with someone, and I told them, I really feel bad. I feel like I’m in danger. I can’t breathe,” Jesus says. “I just got in my car and went to the first pharmacy I was able to find, and they told me to go to the ER right away.”
Doctors there discovered that Jesus had a pulmonary embolism, a blockage in the arteries in the lungs. It usually occurs when a blood clot travels from the legs to the lungs.
“After the first x-ray, they saw clots all over my lungs,” Jesus says. “It was a miracle that I made it to the ER.”
Another life-changing diagnosis
Jesus wasn’t out of the woods. His pulmonary embolism caused blood pressure to build in his lungs — pulmonary hypertension. He was diagnosed with a type of pulmonary hypertension called chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH). CTEPH can cause symptoms like shortness of breath, fatigue and chest discomfort, as well as strain the heart and lead to right heart failure.
Despite taking medications to relieve his CTEPH, his symptoms gradually worsened.
“My mom used to cry every time we’d talk on the phone, because she could hear how heavy my breathing was,” Jesus says.
Jesus tried to move on with his life, but privately he felt sad and stressed about his future.
“I was probably going to have a miserable rest of my life, if I didn’t do anything,” Jesus says.
Temple offered a long-term solution to his CTEPH
His local pulmonologist told Jesus about a solution for his CTEPH: a specialized surgery called pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (PTE), performed at Temple Health in the Temple Heart & Vascular Institute.
Jesus met with Anjali Vaidya, MD, FACC, FASE, FACP, Co-Director of Temple’s Advanced Pulmonary Hypertension, Right Heart Failure & CTEPH/PTE Program. After reviewing his medical history, Dr. Vaidya and her team told Jesus that he was a candidate for PTE.
“They told me they were going to take care of me, and not to worry,” he adds.
In April 2019, Yoshiya Toyoda, MD, PhD, performed Jesus’ PTE surgery at Temple. In this highly complex surgery, patients are on a heart-lung machine. The blood is cooled enough to slow metabolism. This allows the surgical team to periodically turn the heart-lung machine off so that they can open the pulmonary arteries and extract the blood clots blocking them.
Jesus’ surgery lasted more than 10 hours. Every few hours, one of his nurses would call his wife to let her know Jesus was doing fine. During his hospital stay, his Temple team continued to take great care of him. Several personal touches stand out for Jesus. For instance, his nurses placed a cooling fan by his bed and made sure he could listen to classical music which is his favorite.
“That was just unbelievable treatment,” he says. “They treated me like I was their family.”
After a long recovery, Jesus found that he had more energy. And his shortness of breath was gone.
“I play the saxophone now!” he says.
Not bad for a guy who had difficulty breathing with every step before his surgery.
