Welcome to my day to day journal of having open heart surgery.

When I started this blog I was not sure if I would need surgery but after many tests and doctors visits I had valve replacement surgery on June 23, 2010. I was born with a congenital heart defect, a bicuspid aortic valve. My blog reads backwards (like all blogs)....not like a story in chronological order...so go all the way to the beginning (here) to read about my history and how this all got started.

Let me know you stopped by......leave me a comment :)

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Second meeting with Doctor

I have been going to this very well renowned Cardiology group in Fairfax, VA for quite a long time now.  Maybe 2001 or even earlier.....and my regular doctor was on vacation when I had called back in April so I met with a new young female doctor.  She is very nice but very young.  When she came in the room, she seemed to be talking about me being in a "gray area".  Not quite where I would be having this surgery immediately.  I was a 1.6 in 2007, I now am a 1.1 and she would rather I be .09 or .08 before I do surgery except I am very symptomatic.  She did say one thing that felt helpful.
                  She said your heart keeps making up for the lost of work being done by this valve.  It            continues until it can't anymore.  And you may have hit that point....where your heart has had enough. 

But because, since I had seen her last, my symptoms were so much worse and really effecting my day to day life she wanted to do another test.  And I have this cough....wow this cough....it is something that happened when I say to much, have trouble breathing, get excited or basically do anything involving moving around alot.  She seemed concerned about that too.  She decided she wanted to do a Cardiac Catheterzation on me at Fairfax Hospital.  She kept calling it a last resort type test and she thought it would give her more insight on the size of my valve and such.  I asked for a chest xray because I feel as if I have walking pnemonia.  She agreed to give me that too.   So after the appt we went and got pre-op blood work for the Cath and my chest Xray. 

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