'Good that I survived': 94-year-old has new lease on life after procedure

There's a procedure offered at Corewell that's extending lives. It's called transcatheter aortic valve replacement, or TAVR.

Before this procedure, the options for patients were open heart surgery or death. That prognosis is a thing of the past for one almost 95-year-old.

Corewell Health nurse Jenny Prower walks her grandpa, Bill Sikma, to every appointment.

“Grandpa Bill, he always keeps us on our toes,” Corewell Health nurse Jenny Prower said.

Jenny also happens to be a nurse for the very department where her grandfather recently got the TAVR procedure.

“They enjoyed punching little holes here and there,” Bill Sikma said through laughter.

Bill says at 94, he's got a lot more good years left in him.

“Really good that I survived,” Bill said.

Dr. William Merhi, who's done the procedure thousands of times, explains how it works.

“A TAVR is when we take an aortic valve and basically compress it down to the size of my finger. That allows us to snake it up an artery, up into the heart, where we can deploy the new valve inside of the old valve, and patients get a brand-new valve without having to have open heart surgery,” Dr. William Merhi said.

“These patients typically didn’t have options in the past,” Merhi said.

It especially means a lot to Bill.

“You go through life just trying to do the right thing the best you can,” Bill said.

Jenny is grateful to walk alongside her grandpa many more times, for years to come.

“He’s not a typical 94-year-old. He doesn’t look his age; he doesn’t act his age,” Jenny said.

Bill's mom lived to be 102. His older brother lived into his hundreds as well. Bill's confident this procedure will help him reach triple digits too.

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