COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)-It’s been two months since Baptist Memorial Hospital administered its first ever ascending aortic valve replacement surgery.
Lucy Phillips of Columbus was the patient, and had the procedure performed on her by a doctor who’s new to the hospital staff.
“I feel like I’ve got a whole new lease on life,” said Lucy Phillips, who had the surgery performed on her two months ago.
Phillips said she’s ready to live and enjoy life again, that’s because just a few months ago, her health started to take a turn for the worse.
“At the end of October I was made aware of an aneurysm that really got to an over enlarged size and within the range of necessary surgery,” she said.
So, she took a trip to baptist memorial hospital to speak with her doctors about it, only to find out more bad news.
“While I was there, discovered that i needed the valve replacement because it was hurting the aneurysm,” Phillips recalled.
This meant that she needed to have two surgeries, one to repair the the aneurysm and another to replace the aorta valve.
Phillips admits she was a little nervous about having the surgery, but given the condition of her heart, if she wanted to live she had no other choice.
“You know, you have that fear of being put to sleep and then next fear is waking up,” she said.
But thankfully she did wake up, only to find out that her surgery was successful.
“We had a heart machine to stop the heart,” said Dr. Hector Dox, cardiologist at Baptist Memorial Hospital. “We replaced that segment if the aorta, which is pipe that comes out of your heart, and we had to replace that with a segment of Graft. And with the aortic valve, we removed her own aortic valve and we put a new valve in place.”
Doctor Dox was in charge of performing the surgery.
He’s performed this type of surgery several times throughout his career, but this was his first time performing it at Baptist memorial.
“I told her, you don’t have to have this done here, but I beg you to please have it done somewhere because it will get you,” said Dr. Dox.
Despite this being the hospital’s first time to perform the surgery, Phillips said she still felt comfortable with her decision to go through with the procedure.
“This is the package deal,” said Phillips. “The surgery, intensive care, the nursing staff was wonderful.”.
Phillips is home now and tells WCBI she’s feeling fine and feels like a brand new person now that she’s had a successful surgery.
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