Chapters Transcript Video Longtime Surgeon Trusts His Heart to His Baptist Health Colleagues I'm very grateful to have been involved with Baptist Health, but I began doing that in the late 60s. And my name is Doctor Howard Katzman. I'm a general and vascular surgeon. I went to medical school at the University of Pittsburgh, and did all my surgical training here in Florida at Jackson Memorial Hospital. I came into the hospital short of breath and unable to carry out my usual activities, and I found out in the emergency room something that I didn't know about myself was the fact that my pulse was in the mid-30s and as low as 33, and that's when I discovered that I had a 3rd degree heart block with a very small pulse rate. Caused me to have what's known as acute congestive heart failure. Well, that's that's a moment everybody must face when there's a medical crisis. I hadn't faced that moment in my life before because other things I had done were certainly not acute. My thoughts were you just be the patient. Let the doctors drive this bus. You've been driving a bus for a long time for many other people. Now it's your turn to let them do it. We take care of many patients, but when it happens to a dear friend, a colleague, and someone you've looked up to, it certainly hits a little bit different. We knew that we had to do a good job and take care of our buddy. I know everybody here. I know the quality of the care here and most importantly, my family will be here as well. So there wasn't a difficult moment for me to make a decision to stay within the Baptist system. Having Doctor Katzman, uh, trusting our team to treat him, uh, uh, and severe aortic stenosis is one of, uh, you know, lethal bowel disease because if you don't treat them, uh, once you have heart failure. Uh, the risk of mortality is sort of similar to having a stage 4 cancer kind of mortality. It truly was a journey. I have to say. What stood out to me is that every. Health care provider that I came in touch with, including the nursing staff, the assistant staff, the physicians, the physician extenders, all came to me with a great deal of courtesy, empathy and skill. I had no questions about anything that was done because it was simply explained to me very carefully. And I realized they were handling patients and handling me exactly the way I think I've practiced all these years, and that was extremely comforting. I'll tell you he was very sick and to just see how quickly he returned to normal and how he was able to recover was just amazing. I've had excellent follow up in the office with electrophysiology team, the valve implant team, my cardiologist. Uh, and I've gotten better and better practically every week. Now I'm able to walk 1 mile every day without shortness of breath. I can play golf, go back to the Keys, travel, and that's just in a matter of 8 weeks that this opportunity to be a grateful patient and to share my story is extremely important to me because I want everybody else to know that they can have that same experience. Created by
