A Life-Saving Catch - Jim's Story

For Jim Z., an active 61-year-old, feel­ing wind­ed after rou­tine activ­i­ties seemed like a nor­mal part of aging. But a day of base­ball drills with his son changed everything. 

This past August, Jim decid­ed to join a men’s over-60 base­ball league for fun. ​“I had my son take me out to a local base­ball field to run drills,” Jim said. ​“He was hit­ting ground balls, and I prob­a­bly took 10 or 12. I was out of gas. I had to sit down and catch my breath.” It wasn’t the first time Jim had noticed changes in his ener­gy lev­els, sim­ple activ­i­ties like yard work or climb­ing stairs left him strug­gling for air. 

“There had been times just when mow­ing the lawn or bring­ing laun­dry upstairs that I would feel like I was out of breath. I would take lit­tle breaks. I just kind of attrib­uted it to get­ting old­er,” he recalled. 

But, hav­ing near­ly passed out run­ning drills in the sum­mer heat with his son, he rec­og­nized some­thing more than aging was going on. Jim decid­ed it was time to seek care with pri­ma­ry care physi­cian, Dr. Jason Dy. Upon learn­ing Jim’s symp­toms, Dr. Dy quick­ly assessed that there was a car­dio­vas­cu­lar issue that need­ed atten­tion fast. ​“He got the ball rolling,” Jim said. 

With­in days, Jim was under the care of Dr. Sujith Kalathiveetil, a car­di­ol­o­gist at Duly, who ran a series of tests, includ­ing an echocar­dio­gram. The results revealed a bicus­pid aor­tic valve, and the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion became clear. 

“He told me at that point that we real­ly need to get on this because if we don’t, we’re look­ing at a lifes­pan of an addi­tion­al year or two,” Jim recalled. ​“That’s when it real­ly hit me.” 

The care Jim received was swift and coor­di­nat­ed. On Sep­tem­ber 4 — less than a month after his first symp­toms appeared while play­ing base­ball — Jim under­went suc­cess­ful valve replace­ment surgery. ​“The run­ning joke is base­ball saved my life,” he said with a laugh. 

He real­ized that had he not been atten­tive to his symp­toms that day on the base­ball field and reached out to Dr. Dy, his out­come could have been very different. 

Jim con­tin­ues his recov­ery, tak­ing his blood oxy­gen and blood pres­sure dai­ly and has reg­u­lar fol­low-up appoint­ments with Dr. Kalathiveeti who stays close­ly con­nect­ed to his care. ​“To give you an idea of how con­nect­ed he is, on my dri­ve home from work, he called me him­self to go over the results on the phone,” he said. 

While Jim looks for­ward to resum­ing his active lifestyle, he knows his health must remain his top pri­or­i­ty — and his team at Duly will con­tin­ue to sup­port him. 

“Every­body was fan­tas­tic. I mean, I might not be here today if not for how quick­ly the Duly doc­tors act­ed — from top to bot­tom, from diag­no­sis through care and con­tin­ued care,” he shared. ​“As I’m still on my health jour­ney, I feel as though they’re with me. I’m count­ing on them.”