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Anne Accardo poses for a photograph before a check-up two months after her surgery Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, at UT Physicians, the clinical practice of UTHealth Houston, in Houston.

Anne Accardo poses for a photograph before a check-up two months after her surgery Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, at UT Physicians, the clinical practice of UTHealth Houston, in Houston.

Anne Accardo meeting embraces Dr. Gustavo Oderich, vascular surgeon McGovern medical school at UTHealth Houston,UT Physicians and Memorial Hermann, for a check-up two months after her surgery Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, at UT Physicians, the clinical practice of UTHealth Houston, in Houston. Oderich created a customized stent just for her aneurysm surgery.

Dr. Gustavo Oderich, vascular surgeon McGovern medical school at UTHealth Houston,UT Physicians and Memorial Hermann, checks in with patient Anne Accardo during a check-up two months after her surgery Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, at UT Physicians, the clinical practice of UTHealth Houston, in Houston. Oderich created a customized stent just for her aneurysm surgery.

Dr. Gustavo Oderich, vascular surgeon McGovern medical school at UTHealth Houston,UT Physicians and Memorial Hermann, checks in with patient Anne Accardo during a check-up two months after her surgery Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, at UT Physicians, the clinical practice of UTHealth Houston, in Houston. Oderich created a customized stent just for her aneurysm surgery.

Dr. Gustavo Oderich, vascular surgeon McGovern medical school at UTHealth Houston,UT Physicians and Memorial Hermann, draws a diagram of a customized stent and explains it to patient Anne Accardo during a check-up two months after her surgery Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, at UT Physicians, the clinical practice of UTHealth Houston, in Houston. Oderich created a customized stent just for her aneurysm surgery.

Dr. Gustavo Oderich, vascular surgeon McGovern medical school at UTHealth Houston,UT Physicians and Memorial Hermann, shows the updated scanning images of o patient Anne Accardo during a check-up two months after her surgery Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, at UT Physicians, the clinical practice of UTHealth Houston, in Houston. Oderich created a customized stent just for her aneurysm surgery.

Dr. Gustavo Oderich, vascular surgeon McGovern medical school at UTHealth Houston,UT Physicians and Memorial Hermann, poses for a photograph Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, at UT Physicians, the clinical practice of UTHealth Houston, in Houston. Oderich created a customized stent just for his patient Anne Accardo's aneurysm surgery.

Anne Accardo’s doctor, Gustavo Oderich, describes it as a Cinderella story. Like a glass slipper that could only fit one foot, Oderich — a vascular surgeon McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, UT Physicians and Memorial Hermann — designed a stent specifically for Accardo.

And like the fairy tale, the two became separated, prompting a quest to bring them back together. Only, instead of searching the land for the only maiden for whom the shoe fit, Accardo’s situation meant finding a custom stent, lost in FedEx in Memphis.

“There was no way it would get to me in time,” Accardo said.

The New Orleans resident, 46, was waiting for the stent to be delivered in Houston.

Once it landed, she would undergo a revolutionary surgery, only performed by 10 surgeons in the U.S. — including Oderich.

And if that wasn’t enough, Accardo was in town early with her partner Ken Daigle. They wanted to outrun Hurricane Ida, which was heading to Louisiana right before her Aug. 31 operation. After a decadeslong medical journey, the light at the end of the tunnel began to seem out of reach.

That is, until manufacturing company Cook Medical assumed the role of fairy godmother and literally fired up the jet engine.

Oderich called with the news, “The stent is on the way.”

The story began in 2000 with a menstrual cycle that wouldn’t stop.

Accardo was on birth control and had breakthrough bleeding.

“I kept thinking it’s got to stop,” she recalled.

When it didn’t, Accardo grew so weak that her father had to carry her to the car and rush her to the emergency room.

“I was tested for every bleeding disorder out there,” she added.

Newly wed, she was warned by a fertility specialist of the dangers of pregnancy: “When you get pregnant, the arteries in your uterus open to the size of garden hoses. You could bleed to death.”

In the meantime, Accardo continued to make regular trips to the hospital to stop the bleeding.

“I was exhausted,” she recalled. “It was like three years of hell.”

In 2003, doctors performed a partial hysterectomy.

But, the removed section of her uterus came back from pathology with no abnormalities, nothing that could have caused — or explain — the bleeding.

The next step was having her aorta checked. Again, the results were normal.

Accardo still had no answers. But the bleeding mysteriously stopped.

“I went on with my life,” Accardo said.

Another five years would pass before she landed in the ER again.

Accardo’s husband, a police officer, died in Hurricane Katrina. Their house was ruined by the storm, completely underwater. After gutting it, Accardo sold the property and tried to rebuild her life.

By 2008, she found solace in the gym. She enjoyed her new job and even began dating again.

One night at dinner, an intense pain grew in her jaw.

“From that point on, it felt like someone took a knife down my chest,” she said. “I looked at my boyfriend and said, ‘I’m having a heart attack.’”

He assured her that she was too young at only 33.

“I was sweating profusely and shaking,” Accardo said. “I went to the bathroom, and by the time I came back to the table, I was pale.”

She went straight to the ER.

“They took me back right away and did all kinds of tests,” Accardo said. “Everything was coming back normal, but I was doubled over with pain.”

Finally, the cause was discovered — an aortic dissection, a tearing in the main artery that is often deadly.

Accardo’s mind immediately flashed to the actor John Ritter, who died from aortic dissection.

“I just lost it,” she said. “I’d never heard of anyone living through that.”

The cardiovascular surgeon on call that day in New Orleans told her that if he performed the surgery there, she had only a 50 percent chance of survival.

“But if I get you to Houston, you have a 95 percent chance,” he explained.

Accardo was transported by jet.

“I was on an operating table by 8 a.m. the next morning,” she said.

That was her first open-heart surgery, performed by Dr. Anthony Estrera, a vascular surgeon at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston and UT Physicians and an attending surgeon with Memorial Hermann.

Accardo also connected with Dr. Dianna Milewicz, director of the Division of Medical Genetics at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.

“I think it’s Loeys-Dietz,” Milewicz said. Loeys-Dietz syndrome is a genetic condition of connective tissue that causes aortic enlargement. First identified in 2005, it was still unknown when Accardo started becoming a regular in the hospital.

After confirmation from a blood test, Accardo finally had an answer.

“I had my diagnosis,” she said. “I knew my life was going to be very different from now on.”

After the diagnosis, Accardo lost count of surgeries. She lists a second open-heart surgery and a subclavian artery repair, among others.

In 2021, she told Estrera, “Something is not right. I just know something is wrong.”

He told her about Oderich, who is world-renowned when it comes to innovative, minimally invasive endovascular techniques.

The aorta is the largest blood vessel, arching up from the heart into the lower neck, then back down through the center of the body and then dividing into the legs. Normally, the aorta is as wide as a quarter, Oderich explained.

When the size expands or dilates, an aneurysm forms, resulting in a weakness in the blood vessel and in a risk of rupture. Tearing is also possible, which is known as an aortic dissection.

Patients with genetic diseases, like Loeys-Dietz, are predisposed to aneurysms and dissections, Oderich explained.

Traditionally, most aneurysms and dissections that affect the aorta were treated by conventional open surgery. The operations required a large incision and the assistance of a heart and lung machine. A less invasive alternative is endovascular repair, which uses special stents, placed inside the artery using a small incision in the groin.

An innovative technology uses stents built with separate sides arms, “branches,” or fabric openings, “fenestrations.” This allows the addition of separate stent parts to continue blood supply to the organs.

“These aneurysms are not straightforward to fix and require a great deal of planning,” Oderich said. He explained that this technique avoids the need of a large incision, as well as the interruption of blood flow, which accompanies open surgery.

Oderich said that some patients can be treated with an off-the-shelf stent, but many need specific stents for their unique anatomy.

“We can measure precisely the distances between vessels and their exact location,” he added. “Then we request from engineers a specific shape and length, with branches in the places we want.”

The operation is performed in hybrid rooms that allow X-ray imaging in the middle of an operation.

“We place the stents exactly where we want in the aorta,” said Oderich, who began working on fenestrated stents in 2007 at the Cleveland Clinic. He likens piecing everything together to building a ship inside a bottle.

Most fenestrated and branched stents, however, are not yet commercially available in the U.S., even though they are widely used in other parts of the world.

Only a few centers in the country have Food and Drug Administration-approved research protocols to access the technology.

Oderich is included on the list. His ongoing research offers these special stents, and he relocated to Houston last year, after serving at the Mayo Clinic.

For Accardo, it came just in time.

“Her anatomy was already so distorted” from prior surgeries, Oderich said.

With two arteries feeding her left kidney, instead of the usual one, Accardo was an ideal candidate for a fenestrated and branched stent.

The procedure finally took place on Sept. 5, right after the Cook jet landed.

“The operation took around two to three hours,” Oderich said. “Immediately after that, she woke up.”

Because it was a minimally invasive surgery, Accardo recovered quickly.

“I was in the hospital four days instead of six weeks,” she said. “The technology Dr. Oderich has is a game changer.”

Oderich saw Accardo for a two-month checkup after the operation.

He is required to follow each of his research patients for five years for the FDA, but he continues to monitor their progress long after. He has performed more than 700 implants of the fenestrated stents in total, including 60 since moving to Houston.

“I fell in love with Houston because of its history of cardiovascular surgery,” Oderich said. “I want to help write the next chapter.”

Accardo is never certain what the future holds.

“Will it be my last surgery? I had no idea,” she said. “But I’m hopeful.”

Accardo leans on faith, her family and friends to navigate the uncertainty. What helps most of all, however, was completely unexpected, Accardo explained.

Because of her genetic diagnosis, she reconnected with a child she gave up for adoption at age 19.

In the beginning, she kept in contact with the adoptive family, but lost touch when her daughter, Mary Ellen, was 3.

Loeys-Dietz gave her a reason to try again.

“I had to find her,” Accardo said.

Mary Ellen was screened at age 14.

“My daughter tested negative,” Accardo said. “No one else in my family has it. It started and stopped with me. When I got the news she was negative, it was the best day.”

The two began to write letters. When Mary Ellen turned 18, she began to communicate with her mother on her own.

At age 19, Mary Ellen met Accardo in person for the first time.

“I wouldn’t necessarily have the relationship I have with my daughter if I didn’t have this diagnosis,” Accardo said.

“I’d go through it all again just to have this connection with her,” she added. “That’s what gets me through — mostly her.”

And that enduring love gives her Cinderella story a fairy-tale ending.

Lindsay Peyton is a Houston-based freelance writer.

Lindsay Peyton is ReNew Houston's Transformation columnist.

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