How the flu shot saved my life
A doctor at a flu clinic detects a heart defect in former Star editor Kevin MacLean, which could have been fatal if not treated.

Toronto Star
January 7, 2014
By Kevin MacLean

If it wasn’t for the flu shot, I would probably be dead now.

The flu vaccine itself didn’t save my life, but getting the shot certainly did.

It was 2009, the last time the H1N1 virus threatened the world with a pandemic. By early November, I still hadn’t found time to get myself “shot up.” Despite repeated entreaties from my wife, a hospital administrator, and my own admonitions to our three grown children, I just hadn’t got around to it.

Fate intervened. While driving through Woodbridge on a sunny day off, a flu clinic sign beckoned me into one of those ubiquitous suburban plazas. I was the only patient at that moment and was whisked inside, where a doctor administered the H1N1 vaccine.

The young doctor did the usual check of my vitals — blood pressure, lungs, heart etc. — then turned to me and said, “You know, you have a heart murmur?” Or something like that. It’s all a bit of a blur, since, no, I had no idea I had a murmur. And what the heck does that even mean?

The doctor assured me it was probably nothing to be alarmed about, but suggested I get it checked out. A few minutes later, sitting in my car in the parking lot, I was on the phone to my family doctor, arranging to see him that same day.

This all occurred at a very inconvenient time in my life. I had been an editor at the Toronto Star for nearly 25 years and, at age 52, was seriously considering taking the early retirement buyout the company was offering. The deadline to file my papers was just over two weeks away and all this health crisis stuff was really an unwanted complication.

In a matter of days, a battery of tests showed a genetic anomaly — a bicuspid aortic valve — meaning that the main heart valve has only two prongs instead of the three usually installed at the “factory.” This sloshy, noisy valve accounted for the murmur. Not a big deal, I was assured again. But there was something else: a weakness in the wall of the aorta, also known as an aortic aneurysm. Now THAT was serious, like having a time bomb ticking away in your chest. You just never know when it might explode.

Biking, walking, working out, just everyday living — it could rupture at any time. Had it not been discovered, I have little doubt that I would be dead by now.

As one of the cardiac experts at St. Michael’s Hospital told me: “If your aorta ruptures while you’re here at the hospital, you have about a two per cent chance of survival. If it happens out on the street or at home, well… .”

What to do? Should I follow through with my early retirement plans? Stay on so my family would have insurance and benefits in the event of my demise? Or just live my life and take each day as it comes?

I opted for the latter. The doctors told me they would monitor the size of my aneurysm (it was about 4.7 centimetres at that time, shy of the 5-centimetre threshold for surgery, but much expanded from the 2.5-centimetre diameter of a “normal” person). Eventually I would need open heart surgery to replace the aorta with a spanking new Dacron (plastic) one that would live on long after I was gone.

For more than two years, life went on: I left the Star and began a part-time teaching career, the aneurysm grew slowly, I stayed healthy, and on April 30, 2012, a new life chapter opened when I received my Dacron aorta. The bicuspid valve that started it all was deemed healthy, if a bit noisy, and it remained intact, a souvenir of sorts.

I owe my life to the sharp ears of the young doctor at the Woodbridge flu clinic. Today, I remain healthy, happy, fully recovered and I do things — bucket list and otherwise — that I might not have made time for previously.

And I get my flu shot every year. You should, too.