Christopher's CHD Story
I was born with a congenital heart defect called a bicuspid aortic valve and an aortic coarctation. I have had a long and complex history of heart procedures, including open heart surgeries in 1986, 2006 and 2008, and a TAVR procedure in 2016.
On July 4th weekend of this year, I contracted MRSA, likely through an untreated cut on my finger while out fishing. Within just a few days, I woke up slurring my words and had a skyrocketing fever - I knew right away something was very wrong.
Though I do not remember much of the first few days, it took 40 or so hours of bouncing through several different emergency rooms and cutting through the medical world's red tape to get to NYU Langone Center in Manhattan, the hospital that had done several of my previous surgeries and the one place we knew that could save my life. I spent the first 11 days in the Cardiac ICU trying to pinpoint and then beat the untreatable infection with various antibiotics. They called this strain of MRSA "USA 3000". After many sleepless nights it became apparent that the infection, as infections tend do to in heart patients, or any patient with foreign hardware in their body, had found its way onto my heart and aorta and we were rapidly losing the battle. In the early afternoon of July 15th, after a particularly long night and another round of MRIs, I was informed the surgeon team had "cleared their schedule” and I was headed for emergency open surgery. It was a long and dangerous exploratory emergency surgery and I was physically the weakest I’ve ever been. The odds of success were too scary to be said at loud, but we all could feel heaviness in the room and the challenge we were up against. Sitting next to the surgeons table, I had a brief last moment with one of the surgeons. I recall telling her “I hope you ate your wheaties” and “you got this - I have children to raise and I’m going to make it”.
Thankfully, it was a successful surgery. Two incredible surgeons, Dr. Jamie Eridon and Dr. Matt Williams and their team, over eight hours, meticulously cleared, cleaned and scraped the infection from my heart and then replaced and rebuilt my ascending and descending aorta and aortic valve. I was fortunate to wake up to the assistance of friend and nurse Kelsey Carter, a much-needed friendly face in my most challenging and vulnerable of moments. I spent seven more days recovering in the Cardiac ICU, and the past few months at home experiencing a very slow, yet overall successful recovery.
It has now been 3+ months and I am feeling physically and mentally stronger every day. I’d like to thank my incredible parents Diane and Vinny for the unwavering support only parents can provide, my wife Kristen and two beautiful children Mia and Crew for giving me the determination to fight and the will to live, and my law colleagues for covering files, cases and court dates while I was down and out. I am also incredibly grateful for the countless friends, family, colleagues, community and church members who supported my family and I in so many ways and who prayed for us when every prayer mattered. It is during these difficult times that small town Montauk shines the brightest.
I am so fortunate to live and raise my family in this town and I have so much to live for. We all do. It’s been a long and painful journey and I’m excited and grateful for these next chapters as a father, husband, law practitioner, and member of this community.
“Keep your head up, your belly full, and your legs moving” is a heart surgery recovery motto that has really stuck with me. So that’s what we’ll continue to do.