Hruby calm about heart surgery

By ERIC SEIVERLING

eseiverling@yourmvi.com

To most people, Halloween means costumes and candy.

But the holiday has a special meaning for to 2017 Ringgold High School graduate Alicia Hruby.

Hruby, 21, and her fiancée, Braden Henson, are planning to get married on Halloween next year after the two began dating on Halloween 2018.

But Hruby has one detail she needs to attend to later this month.

On Sept. 29, Hruby is scheduled to have surgery at Pittsburgh’s Presbyterian Hospital to repair a hole in her heart and remove blood clots from her heart that resulted from a central venous catheter being removed from her chest in July.

And Hruby doesn’t seem the least bit nervous about the operation.

“I’ve been through enough surgeries and procedures to know I have the best doctors,” Hruby said. “I trust them fully.”

Hruby’s upcoming surgery is just one of nearly a decade’s worth of surgeries and procedures.

In May 2012, Hruby was diagnosed with several autoimmune disorders, including primary sclerosing cholangitis, primary biliary cirrhosis and autoimmune hepatitis.

Hruby later developed other conditions such as varices, ascites, severe portal hypertension, anemia, bone degeneration, peripheral neuropathy, an enlarged spleen and bone and nerve pain.

In March 2015, Hruby received a liver transplant from donor Collin Brumbaugh, a 9-year-old Hesston, Pa., boy who passed away suddenly the same month from a brain aneurysm.

After her liver transplant, Hruby’s medical conditions continued.

She has lost sensation in her hands and feet, needs to use hearing aids and developed problems in her central nervous system, resulting in a partially paralyzed stomach.

“My intestines don’t work,” she said. “A bowel transplant won’t work because my nerves aren’t working. We just let gravity make everything work.”

Hruby also said that due to her blood pressure dropping throughout the day and her having difficulty breathing, she faints about six times a day.

“Most of the time I can feel it coming on and I can sit on the ground before it happens,” she said. “Sometimes I do fall, and I’ll wake up and find myself on the ground. I’ll have to check myself to make sure I didn’t hit my head. So far, I haven’t had to go to the ER yet.”

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