It’s a thank-you note from the heart

South Hill drivers may get a feeling of deja vu when they see the big yellow billboard near Sacred Heart Medical Center. “Another successful operation” the billboard proclaims.

Doug Tapscott, 47, grinned as he watched the billboard go up Wednesday morning.

“I can’t believe she’s doing this again,” he said.

Seven years ago, Doug’s wife, Bonnie, arranged for a similar billboard to go up to thank surgeon Tim Icenogle for saving Doug’s life.

Tapscott’s aorta had ruptured during his 40th birthday party, causing him to collapse. The aorta is the body’s main artery. In anatomical drawings, it looks like a giant question mark. It rises from the heart, arches back and then descends into the abdomen. It feeds the body with oxygen-rich blood.

A ruptured aorta often means sudden death. Actor John Ritter and volleyball player Flo Hyman are well-known victims.

Tapscott, a father of three young children at the time, survived thanks to emergency surgery performed by Icenogle at Sacred Heart. Tapscott got a Gortex patch and a mechanical valve during that procedure.

What caused Tapscott’s aorta to tear turned out to be Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that weakens the body’s connective tissue in blood vessels and elsewhere in the body. It affects about 1 in 5,000 people.

As a Marfan patient, Tapscott has been watched carefully by his doctors. Three years ago, he received another mechanical heart valve. And doctors continued to monitor his aorta with echocardiography, looking for bulging that could indicate weakness.

In March, they measured his aorta ballooning to 5.9 centimeters in diameter, more than twice normal size. Icenogle recommended replacing the entire aorta with Dacron tubing.

The June 14 surgery, performed by Icenogle and Dr. Stephen Murray at Sacred Heart, lasted 19 hours, according to Bonnie Tapscott’s count. Doug, a substitute school teacher, spent five weeks in recovery and rehabilitation before he got to go home.

Lamar Advertising, her former employer, is donating the billboard space for one week, Bonnie Tapscott said. She paid the production costs, but doesn’t want to say how much because she doesn’t want the doctors she’s thanking to know.

Reached by phone Wednesday after a heart transplant surgery, Icenogle shared his billboard credit with “scores of folks involved in a technically challenging operation” and follow-up care. The surgeon named in particular Sacred Heart registered nurses Gary Gunning, Andrea Parker and Leslie Zahn.

Icenogle said the Tapscott surgery was particularly humbling for him because Mafan syndrome had turned the patient’s tissue to the consistency of butter. “Sutures cut right through the tissue,” he said. “That was very humbling and was when the prayer really started going.”

If the recent surgery was most difficult for the surgeon, it was the first emergency surgery seven years ago that was most difficult for Bonnie Tapscott, she said.

Their three children are now ages 17, 14 and 10 – old enough to help out. Also, the first surgery in November 1996 happened right before that year’s damaging ice storm. She had to deal with a tree limb going through the roof of their home with Doug still in the hospital.

This time, she felt less fear, but an equal amount of gratitude to the medical personnel involved.

“Doug has a complete and total rebuilt engine,” Bonnie Tapscott said. “He’s done in that department. He’s done with that kind of surgery. He now has artificial valves and an artificial aorta now. Those will probably outlive us all.”

She hopes she’s done thanking doctors by billboard.

“I absolutely adore Dr. Icenogle and what he’s done. But we don’t want to see him in that capacity, put it that way.”