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Jacobson to celebrate 40th birthday after recovering from heart surgery

Jacobson to celebrate 40th birthday after recovering from heart surgery
Michael Jacobson will return to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester with another batch of stuffed animals after recovering from a major heart operation. Submitted photo
By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

Michael Jacobson is celebrating a big milestone this weekend.

The Charles City resident will turn 40 years old on Sunday, Dec. 15, defying the odds as he continues to live with a congenital heart defect that he has struggled with since the day of his birth.

Born in Owatonna, Minnesota, Jacobson spent his first day of life at St. Marys Hospital in Rochester and had his first open heart surgery at three days old after he was found to have a double outlet on his right ventricle. Two more surgeries followed as he spent nearly the first year of his life in the hospital. At three years old he went back for his fourth surgery.

Since then, though he’s undergone a few minor surgeries, Jacobson has been able to live a normal life in good health. Getting regular checkups at Mayo Clinic, he is being followed in a study as one of 114 infants that have survived this heart defect into adulthood.

Grateful to the hospital that has given him so much care, for the last 15 years Jacobson has been giving back, bringing teddy bears and board games for the patients in the cardiac unit and gifts for the unit nurses.

Having once gotten a teddy bear himself when he was there as a child, he has made a habit of collecting and distributing them when he goes in for his check-ups.

However this year, after years of relative good health, Jacobson felt uncommonly ill last December and it was determined he need a major surgery to again repair his heart.

“They had to make a 3D model of his heart,” said his mother, Karen Smith, who has chronicled her son’s medical journey throughout his life.

Jacobson went in for his fifth heart surgery on April 15. While the 10-hour surgery itself went fine, complications during the bypass left him with a blood infection that damaged his pancreas, turning a week-long hospital stay into one that stretched months.

“I pretty much stayed in the hospital until June,” said Jacobson.

Since then Jacobsen has largely recovered and said he is glad to be back in the swing of things, golfing, fishing, and going back to work.

“I’m doing really good,” said Jacobson. “I’m able to do all the things I want to do.”

With luck, this will be the last time Jacobson needs a major operation, though the possibility will always be there.

“They hope for an ultimate end repair, but they do expect more,” said Smith.

In the meantime, Smith says that Jacobson will back at St. Marys with another bundle of bears when he goes back for a check-up next spring.

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