Bush thanks doctors after wife’s surgery
HOUSTON — Former President George H. W. Bush saluted Houston surgeons and thanked his fellow presidents for their calls Thursday after former first lady Barbara Bush underwent successful open heart surgery to replace her aortic valve.
“I’ve been a nervous wreck about it,” Bush said, choking back tears a day after his wife spent 2z hours receiving a replacement valve from a pig in Houston’s Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center.
Mrs. Bush, 83, was making “an excellent recovery” and was joking with hospital staff, said Dr. Gerald Lawrie, the lead surgeon. He called the surgery ordinary and not surprising since valves in people of her age are likely to deteriorate and require replacement or some other treatment.
“From our perspective, this was a very routine procedure, and we expect her to make a full recovery,” Lawrie said.
The former president said he was reassured before the operation but never considered it routine “when you come in and put a pig’s valve in your wife. It’s scary. I didn’t know anything about it.”
He said he ranked it as “one of the more stressful” experiences in his life, which include bailing out of a shot-up Navy plane in World War II and his political career.
Mrs. Bush was expected to remain in intensive care for another couple of days, then in general care at the Methodist Hospital for maybe a week. Bush got to see his wife shortly after she got out of surgery Wednesday morning.
Bush said their oldest son, former President George W. Bush, had called Wednesday, and that President Obama and former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton also called.
Bush said Obama told him he was thinking about Mrs. Bush “and wanted to send her love.” Bush added that he thought it was “extraordinarily thoughtful” for Obama to call, “with all the things on his plate.”
Bush said he and his wife were told about a week ago, after Mrs. Bush experienced shortness of breath, that the surgery should be performed soon. Lawrie said the condition, a severe narrowing of the main valve, is common.
“Ten percent of people in their 70s are expected to need surgery,” he said, describing a valve thinner than plastic wrap that breaks down and gets stiff after flexing 3 billion times.
“Eventually, it puts severe strain on the main pumping chamber of the heart and leads to fluid in the lungs and progressive deterioration,” Lawrie said. “They do wear out when we get older.”
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