Andrew’s untreated hernia caused years of pain that could have been avoided.

When Andrew first arrived at the emergency room, he was doubled over in pain. He hadn’t been able to stand upright all day. What he thought might be a stomach bug or muscle strain turned out to be something far more serious.

He waited for hours before anyone took him back for scans. It was only when someone finally noticed blood that things accelerated. “All of a sudden, three or four doctors and nurses ran to me, basically sat me down on a gurney, and gave me a shot of some heavy-duty painkillers,” Andrew recalls. “Then they told me it was likely I had endocarditis.”

That moment marked the beginning of a long and difficult journey. It included weeks in the hospital, open-heart surgery, and a recovery that reshaped his life. While that emergency uncovered a life-threatening problem that required immediate treatment, there was something else quietly recorded in his medical chart that no one followed up on. Years later, it would return with consequences just as serious.

A Life Saved, But a Missed Opportunity

Andrew had never heard of endocarditis before. “They explained I could die from it, that I was very close to dying. But at the time, I didn’t really grasp it,” he says.

The infection had reached his heart and destroyed his aortic valve. High-dose antibiotics weren’t enough. Within weeks, Andrew underwent open-heart surgery. It was the day after Christmas. “That experience was terrible,” he says. “The surgery was painful, and recovering from it was just as hard. I had to see a cardiologist weekly for months.”

He had to stop working during that time. His daughter, who lives with her mother during the week, could only visit occasionally while he recovered. “I wasn’t able to care for her. I wasn’t able to work for a good eight or nine months,” he says. Family members stepped in to help, bringing food, running errands, and caring for his daughter when needed. “Everyone was as helpful as they could be.”

During his recovery, Andrew turned to the things that had always brought him comfort. He played video games for hours and filled the room with music. “The whole time I was stuck in bed, that’s what got me through it,” he says. “Gaming helped me escape. Music kept me from falling into a darker place.”

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He eventually returned to his freelance design work, creating graphics and logos for video games and apps. He began exercising and focusing more on his health. He kept up with his daily blood thinners to protect his new heart valve and began to find stability again.

But while his care team had saved his life, they had missed something. It was a detail buried in the records from his early scans, a warning that had gone unnoticed and unaddressed. Years later, the consequences of that silence became impossible to ignore.

Years of Frustration, One Overlooked Line

Around the same time as his heart surgery, Andrew began having severe heartburn. “I was vomiting daily, sometimes multiple times a day,” he says. “It went on for three or four years.”

He brought it up with his doctors. The response was always the same. “They gave me antacids and told me I’d be fine,” he recalls. Meanwhile, the vomiting continued. He lost weight. His teeth began to wear down from years of stomach acid. “My teeth are destroyed now. Every time I threw up, it made it worse,” he says.

The turning point came during another scan, when a new doctor noted a hiatal hernia. This condition causes part of the stomach to push through the diaphragm and into the chest, often leading to acid reflux and vomiting. The doctor mentioned it should have been seen before. Andrew went back to look through his records and discovered it had already been documented years earlier.

“They said it was tiny and not a big deal, but it was clearly written in the scan report. No one ever told me,” he says. “If they’d told me what was in the scan back then, all of that could have been avoided.”

He finally had surgery to repair the hernia in September 2024. The results were immediate. “After the surgery, I knew right away. I didn’t have that issue anymore,” he says.

A Different Kind of Recovery

The frustration Andrew carries is not about a missed diagnosis. It is about a missed opportunity. The hernia was found. It was written in the scan. But no one communicated it to him, and no one took action. “They should have told me about the hernia,” he says. “It was in the scan. It was there. But they didn’t say anything. That’s what went wrong.”

The suffering that followed was not a matter of bad luck. It was preventable. Years of daily vomiting, weight loss, and dental damage could have been avoided with a single conversation.

“If I’d had that fixed when they found it, everything would have been a lot different,” he says. “I wouldn’t have gone through all that vomiting. My teeth would still be okay.”

Today, Andrew is focused on staying healthy. He works remotely as a graphic designer, mostly for small gaming projects. On weekends, he spends time with his daughter, who visits regularly. He still plays role-playing games to relax and lets music shape the rhythm of his day.

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He has also become more selective about the care he receives. “I look for doctors who tell me straight up what’s going on. No sugarcoating,” he says. “Someone who talks to me in a way I can understand and doesn’t leave anything out.”

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