Rose experienced shortness of breath and chest pain while traveling in Syria in 2006 (he was there to interview Syrian president Bashar al-Assad), and on the advice of his heart surgeon, Dr. Wayne Isom, he was rushed to Paris, where he had emergency open-heart surgery to repair his mitral valve. (It was replaced with that of a pig.) It was his second heart surgery: In 2002, Isom operated on another one of Rose's faulty heart valves. The longtime oenephile has since been forced to cut back on his alcohol intake.
You're talking to someone who's very, very lucky. It could have gone the other way," Rose told The Daily Dispatch of Henderson, N.C., his hometown, for a story published Thursday.
The 64-year-old said his doctors in the United States were aware of a weakness in his heart, but didn't expect trouble to crop up so soon. It did just after he boarded a plane from Damascus to Paris on March 24.
"It just deteriorated faster than we thought," Rose said by telephone from his home in New York City, where he returned in late April. |
