A Bridge Over Troubled Heart Waters

A few years ago, Jeremy Haas started feeling tired, but chalked it up to getting older.

Then he developed a cough that didn’t go away.

Then he coughed up blood, and that started a cardiac odyssey that had him at times near death and eventually brought him to Lehigh Valley Heart and Vascular Institute last fall for two life-saving heart procedures.

The 49-year-old Bally man – now on hiatus from his job as a water treatment system technician helping to install dialysis systems in the eastern half of the U.S. – is hoping to soon be on a heart transplant list.

When Haas first developed a cough, it was during the COVID-19 pandemic, and he received medication and antibiotics after virtual visits with his doctor. He was working in Tenafly, N.J., when he first coughed up blood.

“That’s when I stepped outside of my body and said ‘You need to do something here. This is something bigger than what you think it is,’” Haas says. “I thought I had lung cancer because I had smoked off and on for a few years. I thought this was just my body coming back at me.”

An examination by a doctor, not affiliated with Lehigh Valley Health Network, showed something alarming. “My heart looked like a water balloon that had been overfilled,” the U.S. Army veteran says. “I was told to go to the emergency room, and I was admitted.”

Testing delivered more bad news. It showed Haas’ heart’s pumping ability was extremely low and he was in heart failure. He had a peripherally inserted central catheter line (PICC) placed in his right arm that delivered medication that helped his heart pump more blood with each contraction. He also wore a defibrillator vest designed to give his heart a lifesaving shock if needed.

He returned to work after being denied Social Security Disability but was closely monitored by his doctors. Since he traveled for work, he had to arrange to have his medication sent to where he would be working, and arrange for the changing of his bandages, administration of the medication and related tasks.

He eventually had a defibrillator implanted, which freed him from wearing the vest, but still had the PICC line to deliver his heart medication. Infection required the first defibrillator to be replaced. After another infection occurred with the second defibrillator last summer, Haas was critically ill and had to be intubated, meaning he had a tube inserted down his throat, into his windpipe, to help him breathe.

He spent about a month in the hospital and went home, then returned in early November so doctors could implant an Impella heart pump to help his heart function, but also allow it to rest and heal.

That type of Impella was only meant to assist Haas’ heart for a short time. When his condition worsened, his cardiologist reached out to Tim Misselbeck, MD, at Lehigh Valley Heart and Vascular Institute. Dr. Misselbeck agreed to accept Haas as a patient and operate to implant an Impella pump designed for more extended use.

“They (LVHN) gave me a less than 10% chance to make it through, even with the new Impella, just because of how bad everything was,” Haas says. He had the Impella implanted and was placed on dialysis. In addition, he underwent extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, where his blood was pumped outside of his body to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and sends oxygen-filled blood back to his body. He also had a right ventricle assist device (RVAD) implanted to help the right side of his heart function better and rest and heal.

“Basically, every machine you could think of, they had me connected to,” Haas says.

He became stable enough to receive a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) and got that on Nov. 17. The RVAD was removed because the right side of Haas’ heart had recovered. He got back home a few days before Christmas.

“It was sort of miraculous, because he was so sick,” Dr. Misselbeck says. “It was a great outcome. To have needed both the RVAD and LVAD was a marker of just how sick Jeremy was. It’s very unusual to need both.”

Patients with heart problems like Haas are typically much older. Dr. Misselbeck says Haas’ relatively young age, while helpful in the heart health crisis, was not a match for the severity of the situation.

“I had a huge support team, more than I knew, and a prayer group that extended to so many people. I had so many people sending prayers and good vibes my way,” Haas says. “I couldn’t have done it without them.” His entire family, including his mother, two sons and other extended family, were with him every step of the way.

“I was amazed at how well-oiled that machine was,” Haas says of the Heart and Vascular Institute and LVHN. “They are efficient. The right hand knows what the left hand is doing.”

Haas says he was impressed with the various LVHN teams who helped nurse him back to health. “Without this, I was faced with a few weeks to maybe a few months of life. I would definitely have had a very short time left if I couldn’t get this LVAD. When you’re faced with that and you don’t have an alternative, things get real.”

Haas says Dr. Misselbeck and the whole LVHN team made him “feel like family.”

“He’s [Misselbeck] an awesome guy. He is a professional and very gifted, but not arrogant. Somebody who is that good at their job could be very cocky and arrogant, but he’s not. He made me feel like a special patient and he genuinely cared. When I first did that walk down the hallway after the LVAD procedure, they took a video and sent it to Dr. Misselbeck because he wanted to be notified of my progress.”

Haas is now working with doctors at the University of Pennsylvania hospital and was recently placed on a heart transplant list.

“The thing that weighs on me is that someone has to give up their life through some horrible circumstance for me to live,” says Haas, himself a registered organ donor.

Nothing is certain, but Haas is perpetually hopeful.

“I guess I’ve always been a glass half full kind of guy,” Haas says. “It’s not over till it’s over. I have motorcycles and I enjoy playing guitar. I enjoy traveling and meeting new people. I just enjoy living.”

Haas says he hopes to be around to see his eventual grandchildren and see his nieces and nephews grow up. He wants to go on vacation and eventually return to work.

Right now, Haas says he’s feeling great. One thing on his to-do list is a photo with Dr. Misselbeck. Haas says he’ll be wearing a T-shirt that reads, “I was saved by Jesus and an amazing heart surgeon.”

“He’s a special guy,” Haas says.