By Shannon Carroll Nothing can fully prepare a person for having major heart surgery—especially when they’re only in their 20s. As unfathomable as it seemed, this is what Joseph Schwalbach faced in May 2022. “You have infective endocarditis,” the doctors told Joseph after weeks of extreme fatigue and weight loss finally landed him in the Kootenai Health emergency department. An avid athlete his whole life, Joseph played baseball, ran crosscountry and enjoyed all the outdoor activities loved by many northern Idahoans. “I love to snow- and water-ski and go on long hikes in the mountains. I’ve always been very active, so when I was knocked off my feet and not feeling well, it was really unusual for me,” he said. “I was struggling hard for two months. My parents could see that I was not improving, so they took me to an urgent care.” It was there that blood work showed something was very wrong, and Joseph was told to go directly to the emergency department at Kootenai Health. The doctors there confirmed that he was in bad shape. He would need open-heart surgery. Cardiac care and rehabilitation program help a young man recover from open-heart surgery A rare case Joseph was born with a minor heart defect, but one that had been managed well since childhood through regular checkups and standard medication. “The emergency room doctors told me I had somehow contracted a bacterial infection that had made it into my bloodstream,” he said. “My prior heart condition made me a bit more susceptible to complications, but the chances of that happening were extremely rare. Unfortunately, I am that less than 1 percent who this happens to. The infection essentially began to take over my body and ultimately caused lifethreatening damage to two of my heart valves.” After a high-dose series of antibiotics, Joseph underwent a 6
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