David Dorsey shows the heart to get back in the game after unexpected surgery
By Bob Flynn
Each year in the United States surgeons perform more than 900,000 heart surgeries . The majority of those procedures are on people with a history of heart problems or heart disease .
But that ' s not always the case as many other individuals suddenly have something happen to damage their hearts , requiring them to have surgery .
That was the case for City of Somerset Parks Director David Dorsey , who underwent open-heart surgery in 2020 .
Dorsey is known to many in the community as a standout athlete at Somerset High School in the 1970s and long-time assistant baseball coach and head coach of the Lady Jumpers softball team . He always exercised and kept himself in good shape physically throughout his life and had never had any problems with his heart .
In 2018 , his physician Dr . Robert Drake discovered Atrial Fibrillation ( AFIB ) in Dorsey , or an irregular heartbeat , and referred him to Somerset cardiologist Dr . Natarajan Thannoli to monitor the problem .
His heart continued to get out of rhythm every few months or so but each time Dr . Thannoli performed a cardioversion procedure to shock the heart back into rhythm .
After another episode of AFIB in late 2019 , Thannoli sent Dorsey to Baptist Health Medical Group Cardiology where they performed a heart ablation procedure , putting a catheter into the heart and using radiofrequency energy waves to destroy abnormal tissue that was causing the irregular heartbeat .
Following the procedure , Dorsey said he had no other problems with his heart but began to have pain in his back , which continued to get progressively worse over the next few months .
In March of 2020 , while at his daughter ' s house , he became ill and passed out and was taken to the emergency room at Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital .
He had a fever and blood testing revealed that he had an infection . Dorsey was admitted and spent a week in the hospital receiving antibiotics until the infection subsided .
Over the next month , the pain in his back continued to get worse , and in April he had to return to the hospital .
" I was in bad shape again . It got to the point I could hardly walk ," said Dorsey . " This time they did a CT scan of my head and back and found that I had a brain bleed that caused me to pass out and an abscess on my spine ."
He again was admitted to the hospital and over the course of the next week , multiple tests were run . During a scan prior to another cardioversion , Thannoli discovered that the infection had seriously damaged the mitral valve in Dorsey ' s heart .
When Thannoli informed him of what he had found and that he was immediately sending him to Baptist Health Hospital in Lexington , Dorsey said he was absolutely stunned .
" I was shocked . I never dreamed in a million years that I would ever have to have open-heart surgery ," said Dorsey . " I was one of those people who say that will never happen to me .'
" I said , ' Dang , I have to go to Lexington and have heart surgery . I mean it was a real shock and scary ," he added . " It ' s not something you ever expect to hear out of the blue ."
Dorsey said he didn ' t really have time for the information to really sink in before he was loaded into an ambulance and was on the road to Lexington .
While he knew the problem was serious because he had been rushed to Lexington so quickly , Dorsey said the first time he met the man who performed his surgery , Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr . Anthony Rogers , the full severity of the situation really hit home ; the first thing Rogers said when he came in was , " Looking at your scans and reports I thought you would be on life support when you got here ."
While waiting for his heart surgery scheduled for a few days later , Dorsey was seen by Baptist Health Infectious Disease Specialist Dr . Mark Dougherty , who was able to figure out the type of infection on his spine and immediately began treatment .
Four days later , Dorsey , like 290,000 other people nationwide each year , underwent valve replacement surgery when his mitral valve was replaced during a six-hour surgery .
February 2025 SEKY - Southeast Kentucky Life • 11