“I always say that if my bank account was as rich as my soul, I would be very rich,” he said with a chuckle.
A professional drummer since the age of 15, Bettinelli has been open to such music messages for Bon Jovi and Pat Petra, as well as other musicians such as Asia, Average White Band, The Tubes and Split Enze.
He and his band Preview made a big record deal with Geffen in the 80s and RCA in the 90s. Throughout his career, he worked with veteran rock ‘n’ roll maker Keith Olsen, who created hits for top artists such as Floatwood Mack, Ozzy Osborne, g rateful Putit Dead and Santana.
His step-daughter, actress Holly Mary Kbsmbs, also played Piper in the hit TV series “Charmed”.
Despite his accomplishments, Bettinelli was completely unprepared for his most recent victory: he fought an imminent heart attack and Covid-19 together – and won.
Dr. President of Cardiovascular Surgery at Mount Sinai Morningside, New York City, operated on Betinelli. “After Covid-1, he underwent robotic, minimally invasive coronary bypass surgery, which involved less than 1% of all cardiac surgeries,” said Puskas. .
“So I believe he is the first person on the planet to recover from Covid-19 and then undergo invasive, robotic bypass surgery.”
‘I had no idea’
It was early February – the Covid-19 was still a distant threat in China – when Bettinelli learned he feared a “widow-producing” heart attack. It meant that he had a 100% blockage in the complex artery on the left side of the heart – most could not survive, hence the name. To make matters worse, it also became a major obstruction in many other blood vessels.
Again, Bettinelli was lucky. Unlike many people in this condition, he had a painful angina attack as a warning – breaking the floor of his house -. Still, it’s shocking that he has a genetic condition to learn that could kill him at any other time. He experienced some of his last physical objects.
“I’ve always kept myself in shape,” Bettinelli said. “I’m the last person to get tired of the basketball court. I’ve run 10 marathons. I had no idea I had a heart problem.”
Doctors on Mount Sinai quickly implanted the stent, but all that Bettinelli really needed was bypass surgery. However, a day before his procedure was scheduled for mid-March, the hospital had discontinued alternative surgery due to the epidemic.
At the time, the virus was wiping out New York City – with hundreds of cases and dozens of deaths every day.
Bettinelli’s surgery was optional because it had an unusual advantage: a new artery was grown in his heart to compensate for the loss of blood flow – yet another example of his beautiful life.
“It’s basically a way of the heart to bypass,” Bettinelli said. “I have an extra artery that less than 20% of people have.”
Two weeks later, Battinelli’s fate was decided. He started running a fever and showing other signs of Covid-19.
Despite a high-risk priority due to his heart disease – a condition that often makes Covid-19 fatal – cannot be seen through the lines of Battinelli Hospital.
“This was his thickness, while the New Yorkers were kicking his ass covid.” “They were arranging beds in Central Park and Mount Sinai completely closed the atrium and split it for the beds.”
Drive-through tests confirmed that Bettinelli had the virus. In a separate part of his home, far away from his family, he faced frequent favors and overwhelming fatigue. He was anxious, often unaware that his symptoms were due to a virus or his failed heart.
Then, another blow. His elderly parents on Long Island were also diagnosed with Covid-19. But they will not take the disease seriously, Bettinelli said.
“They thought the virus was a conspiracy. I’m losing my mind about it.” “The day before my 89-year-old father went to the hospital, I was on the phone with my mother and she was carrying the virus down.”
His mother recovered at home. His father looked like he too would beat the virus.
“For the first 11 days he was in the hospital, looking like Dad was coming home. And then all of a sudden he crashed. By the grace of God, he kept telling me for a long time how much I loved him.”
‘Worst of the Sick’
On Mount Sinai, Puskas was also facing a devastating reality. As chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, he was leading the reconstruction of the hospital’s large cardiovascular intensive care unit to care for Kovid-19 patients.
“All cardiac surgeons became intensive care doctors in the ICU,” he said. “And because we were the highest tech ICU, we got the worst out of sick people.”
Being members of the cardiac ICU, doctors had a mortality rate of less than 1%, Puskas said. Now, despite their best efforts, people were dying every day in front of their eyes.
“The death rate was about a hundred times higher, at 70% or 80%.” “It was shocking to see … the death rate was so outrageous that it was so high in patients whose loved ones could not live with them.
“And it’s in an environment where all our colleagues are wondering, ‘Will we take care of each other on the ventilator here soon?'”
Despite the constant stress, Puskas was concerned about his patient, hoping that Battinelli would not join the public in the hospital’s ICU.
“I panicked. I thought he might well die,” Puskas said. “He is a one-year-old man, he has coronary artery disease, which requires surgery, which was delayed by the Covid-11 epidemic. And then he gets Covid.
Puskas added, “It falls very square in the category of patients who work very poorly with Covid-19.” “We inspected it carefully, checked in very weeks.”
Gradually, painfully, the crisis in New York City escalated and passed. By June, Puskas and his team were ready to begin alternative heart surgery again. One of the first: Ed Battinelli.
“He was the first patient to have covid-1 that we operated on and he was one of the first patients for whom we had heart surgery after the summit in New York,” Puskas said.
Beautiful recovery recovery, but with a message
Despite the complexity of the delay and of the harassment, Bettinelli got significantly better.
“The next day I was walking on my feet, and they couldn’t believe it,” Bettinelli said. “Everything I was doing was like telling me, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this.’ “
Puskas said hospital staff also did not believe a patient undergoing serious surgery would bring his drumsticks to the hospital.
“So he’s drumming on his metal bed, on his lunch tray,” Puskas said with a laugh, “which was fun for everyone involved.”
Bettinelli explained to Puskas himself only after the surgery, he was speaking using sticks.
“I bring my sticks whenever I’m away from my drums for more than 24 hours,” he added, adding that “after the bypass, I wasn’t sure I could move them.”
“How do they work?” Puskas asked. “Slow down, but it will get better in a few days,” Bettinelli replied, as he continued to practice.
Despite the good news, the experience left both men with a determination to retell the story, in the hope that it might affect those who do not take the novel’s coronavirus risks seriously.
“I hate to say it, but it’s ignorant,” Bettinelli said. “Because there’s no way you can live by the way you lived and then say, ‘Oh, no need to wear a mask. This virus is fake. It’s not happening.’ It’s a dangerous situation. “
For Mount Sinai’s Puskas, it is the sacrifice of the frontline workers that needs to be honored.
“One of the things that amazes me is the weight these nursing teams have borne in this crisis,” Puskas said.
“Countless times I’ve seen nurses with little iPads or their own personal cell phones wrapped in PPE while facetime with a family member, the image of the deceased’s cell phone on the ventilator showed up.
“That image should stick in the brain of a healthy young child who can pass around the Willie-Niley virus,” Puskas said. “Let them stop and think about the burden that falls on that patient, on that family, on that nurse.”
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