November 18, 2024
The call came out of nowhere: “You’re in serious heart failure, Dean. You need to get to St. Boniface Hospital.”
Dean Desrochers and his wife, Jenn, were in their Wolseley home getting ready to go to a surprise party for his friend’s 50th birthday when Desrocher’s phone rang. It was around nine o’clock on a Friday night in May of 2024. He wondered, who calls that late?
He had lived with a heart murmur for the last 25 years, but it had never slowed him down. He checked in with his cardiologist twice per year. He knew his aortic valve would have to be replaced eventually.
He had a cough that had stuck with him that spring. He went to a walk-in clinic, where the physician gave him a prescription for antibiotics and a requisition for a chest X-ray. “With the antibiotics, I figured I would be well on my way to good health again,” remembered Desrochers.
He went for the X-ray a few days later, the results of which were the reason for the urgent, late-night call. Desrochers couldn’t believe he was in heart failure. “It really took me by surprise,” he said.
He reported to St. Boniface Hospital’s Emergency Department that night and added himself to the nearly 47,000 patient visits made to the Hospital’s Cardiac Sciences program each year.
St. Boniface Hospital cardiac surgeon Dr. Aaron Spooner performed Desrocher’s open-heart surgery on June 6, to replace his failing aortic valve with a mechanical one. He was sent home after five days.
The situation before his surgery could easily have been fatal for Desrochers.
“Once Dr. Spooner opened me up through my rib cage on my right side, the damage to my heart was worse than expected,” said Desrochers. “He later told me; part of my heart was functioning at only about seven per cent. No wonder they called me at home!”
Jenn and Dean have three sons: twins Van and Reeve, 13, and their big brother, Jett, 15.
“Reeve just couldn’t visit me in the Hospital, he was too upset. They were sensitive to the whole thing. Even now, they still worry about me. Although they are teenagers now, they’re still little guys to me,” said Desrochers.
Thanks to Foundation donors, he is getting back to the things he loves. “I have been drumming in rock ‘n’ roll bands, off and on, since I was a teenager,” he said. “I am 52 years old now.”
Music fans might have seen Desrochers behind his drum kit in a club or on TV over the years with the Wind Ups, Tooth N Nail, the Rowdymen, the Jake Brakes, and others. “I love entertaining others, and the camaraderie of playing music with the same guys for years,” he said.
“While I was in Hospital, the Tooth N Nail guys took my favourite old, padded drum stool from our practice space. They had it re-covered with a heart rate line tracing in red and gave it to me at our first band meeting after my surgery. It was so meaningful to me.”