He was 26-years-old and too sick to work.

For months the young man you're about to meet suffered from a disease called Pericarditis.

It's a heart condition doctors at mayo clinic say can be difficult to diagnose, often hard to treat and very challenging for many of the people who suffer from it.

Attorney David Gellar lost months of his life because of a disease called Pericarditis.

"I really spent a year just sitting in my house being sick."

His first symptoms mimicked those of a heart attack.

"Horrible pain in my chest and my neck."

But tests showed that the lining of his heart, called the pericardium, was inflamed. The inflammation, often caused by a common virus such as a cold or the flu, can be debilitating, but it's usually not lethal. In fact most cases resolve with prescription anti-inflammatory medication. But the treatment David got at first — steroids — made symptoms much worse.

."I just kept getting sicker."

Dr. Farouk Mookadam says this situation is not uncommon.

"The average patient we see with Pericarditis is about 18 months after the initial insult."

Pericarditis usually strikes people under age 50 and it's not very common. So some doctors aren't used to dealing with it. And making a diagnosis may require a battery of tests -- blood tests, x-rays, ECG’s, cat scans, MRI’s and echo cardiograms.

"Difficult for the patient, difficult to diagnose and difficult to treat."

Dr. Mookadam got David on the right treatment plan, but by that time his pericardium was damaged beyond repair and needed surgery to remove it. Now he's working to let others know about this disease so they won't suffer as he did.

Surgery to remove the pericardium is a big operation ... Open heart surgery. But your heart does not need that lining to function normally. So in severe cases, surgery may be the best option.
David says after his operation, he feels better than he has in a long time.