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Dale: Glad to hear you are home and safe (although you do need a new primary care doctor!). With your Hgb of 7, no wonder your pulse is 85 and pounding. YOU ARE ANEMIC, and rather severely so. Yes, young people "tolerate" this, which in doctors' eyes means that you won't die on them or fall...

Although it goes to many organs, it moves in and out of them pretty quickly. Fat is where it's at for the long haul. Whether losing fat weight or having little to begin with helps reduce the total load hasn't been studied. It's one bizarre drug. There are others that are stored in fat, but...

Amiodarone has very unusual pharmacokinetics. The half life of elimination is quite variable but extremely LOOOONG, somewhere between 10 and 120 days! Most drugs are a few hours to a few days at most. So, what this means is that half of the drug in your body at the end of treatment will still...

Git 'er done! The sooner the better for cardioversion. You know it has a very high success rate, so look forward to normal sinus rhythm again.

That's fortunate. Although it works rather well for atrial fib, it is fraught with side effects, as those links explain. It's very presumptuous of me to question why Vadim was given amiodarone, but I do. There are a number of studies showing that amiodarone can reduce the incidence of atrial...

Hi Vadim: 12.5mg of metoprolol is probably not doing anything. I always questioned why you were put on amiodarone. That is a drug with a laundry list of common side effects, and unless you had some rhythm disturbances, it appears it was purely prophylactic. I don't think too many valve...

McDonald's is in at least 20 other US hospitals. Silly, isn't it?

I think I understand your feeling. This is MAJOR surgery - about as major as it gets. It's just that it has become so common and well practiced, that it is remarkably safe and effective, and so we diminish its significance. But for me too, this was a HUGE life event. Even though I had little...

Your metoprolol dose is very small. Singulair is not the best tolerated allergy medicine and as you were started on it 3 weeks prior to the appearance of your current symptoms, I would put it on the list of suspects. It sounds like it could be a a lot of things (flu, etc.). Bill (retired...

Barron: Very common initial experience at cardiac rehab. I continued and got the staff to increase the exercise level. Sure, I COULD have probably done it on my own, but I WOULDN'T without the regular schedule and the fact that they expect you to be there. And with the careful monitoring and...

At just 6 weeks, I think you should be doing graduated, monitored exercise. I would HIGHLY recommend cardiac rehab. It is routinely included as part of post-op recovery and is paid for by most insurance. That said, it would be relatively normal to feel tired after running at only 6 weeks after...

Great report, Vadim! The good things are getting gooder and so are the bad things. Excellent!

Ovie: I had the same experience - they were far too cautious. They deal mostly with post-MI and coronary bypass patients. I had to tell them I needed more challenge. After a couple of weeks I really got into it and although occasionally they got alarmed at my heart rate, I did just fine...

You are well within the target range, so there's no real point in changing at this point. I have been drifting close to the low end of may target range (I was 2.1 last check with a target of 2-3). Even though it is close to the bottom and has been trickling downward for a few months, there was...

Hope it clears some by Monday!

Yes, what determines why some people cruise and others have more issues is more likely their underlying state of health. I don't think things like pain, fever, fluid accumulation, whether arrhythmias develop, whether you have an intraoperative MI or a hundred other complications that can occur...

Yep, it's strange, but you are on warfarin now. Nosebleeds, particularly in dry climates, may be more common. I have experienced them, as I said, but usually it was a fair sign my INR was getting a bit close to the high side.

Certainly if the valve disease is severe enough to cause heart failure, that can affect kidney function. So, it may be contributing, but, honestly, the doctors should answer this for you. There's no way anyone here, not knowing your mother's medical history or having the proper medical...

Gary: Looks like you're all ready to go. I didn't pick my valve until 8 pm the night before surgery! Take it as easy as you can prior to the surgery and try to relax. The surgery is absolutely routine, particularly in your case with everything else being in such darn good shape. I had a...

What is your INR? I have commonly had minor nose bleeds when my INR was high or even high but in-range. If the nosebleed is back far enough, it will drip down into the back of your throat and appear in your spit. That's my guess as to what's going on. I had minor nosebleeds periodically, but...