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Another landmark in your recovery. :)

Blade. No problem.

Possible? Happened to me. My BAV served me well right up to the day of surgery when I was 61. I ran track and cross country in high school and college and ran marathons into my late 30s until I got an orthopedic injury. Over the years I had been told by various doctors I had a murmur, but...

Yep, what your doc wrote looks reasonable to me too. Carry on!

What you report your cardiologist said is certainly not very clear. My guess is that on the Holter recording he saw few PVCs, while on your exercise recordings there were more, perhaps in bursts and they may have had some other characteristiucs that concerned him. If he has made you wait 2...

Please don't go nuts over your aneurysm. My reading of the Cleveland Clinic index, which says you are a surgical candidate, is that it doesn't mean that you are in any serious immediate danger. It means the risk of having an event exceeds the risk of surgery; therefore, surgery is...

I did try to balance that by saying mechanical valve can need replacement too. At his age, a tissue valve will definitely need repalcement. The newer tissue valves with claimed 20 year longevity don't achieve that in people his age. There are so many aspects to this controversy; so many...

Day 5? AWESOME! I was still in the hospital putting around the ward and totally unable to sleep.

Excellent! Just to show how weird these things can be, I got the big sternal incision, spent 10 hours on the table, had the chect tubes, pacing wire and bladder catheter for several days and never had ANY pain anywhere and received no pain relievers at all after the first routine dose. I wish...

How hard is the INR to manage? How much of your day does it take? It's been a once a month test for me for over 2 years. Although I got into the therapeutic range before I left the hospital, there were some changes in the first 3-4 months, then stable for a year, then 1 change, now stable for...

Personal experiences are hard to put into perspective, even if it's a 1-in-a-1000 thing, with all the other experiences. You can try to sort through this logically, but it's very, very hard to properly weight all the potential factors that go into the assessment of tissue versus mechanical...

3-4 weeks is too early for cardiac rehab for many people. Six weeks is more like it. I know you've read some reports of very fast recoveries here, like Gymguy, but those are at one extreme. I got around OK after surgery, but it was quite a while before I could walk uphill even a short...

Man, you guys with your record rates of recovery and early discharges are embarrassing us slow pokes. CONGRATS!

It never completely goes away since the increase in cardiac output is a normal physiologic effect, heightened by the compensation that heart muscle made when you had your bad valve. With mechanical valve leaflets snapping open and closed more sharply than native valves, this will always be more...

If you see wide fluctuation in test results over short periods of time, like a week or two, despite stable conditions and diet, I would question the test method. Warfarin is very slow acting, as Bina said. Once you have achieved a stable dose and INR, there is no reason to expect rapid...

Larry: Great picture of your family! Also, I just looked at your report from a week ago. Despite the elevated pressure gradient across your calcified, severely stenotic aortic valve, you appear to be in great shape cardiac wise. You have a normal ejection fraction and basically normal left...

Back on topic.... This is FALSE. Burning more calories in your skeletal muscles and increasing blood flow to your skeletal muscles does not affect metabolism of drugs like warfarin or metabolism of clotting factors. Warfarin and many other drugs are metabolized in the liver by an ezyme system...

As far as I'm concerned, if you have tested 2.4 and 2.5 two weeks apart at 7 weeks, you can extend the interval. Most of what is out there about how to monitor and dose warfarin is not based on any real science. This is a very individual thing. There are many protocols and approaches and none...

Instead of fearing the worst, why not expect the expected? I can tell you the IV line in your neck will not bother you. Also, it is a total convenience because they don't have to stick you for blood tests. I HATE needles, so I thought the IV line in my neck was fabulous. It never bothered me...

Sure, I would say most are. More so, the surgeons would be. But remember it is a statistical estimation based on historic information. My bias is that I'd rather be early than late fixing something like this. Of course, not so early that it is completely unnecessary, but as it approaches...