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In September 2015 I had surgery to repair a 5.2 cm aortic aneurysm, however my bicuspid valve was spared. By that December I was downhill skiing at 12,000 feet in Colorado. A little over a year later I'm bench pressing 190 pounds and feeling great. Yes my body responds to stress differently...

More info on the zip ties can be found here: http://www.cardiothoracicsurgery.org/content/7/1/59

pretty good - dr thought it was simply acid reflux, so I've been on nexium for a week and the lump in my throat seems to be gone. The rest of the feeling seems to be over exertion. I was cross country skiing over the weekend at above 10,000 feet and while I felt great doing it, afterwards i...

My closures were causing quite a bit of pain. I'm also very skinny after losing most of my muscle mass prior to and after surgery - at 6'2" I top the scales at about 170 lbs. My sternum was closed with 4 zip ties and two traditional wires. It was the zip ties that were causing the problem...

its been 3 weeks since the wires were removed, 17 weeks since the aneurysm repair. The wire removal does disrupt some muscle junctions at the top and the bottom of the sternum. In fact they said when pulling the bottom wire they "lifted me off the table".

I had my wires removed at 14 weeks, and my sternum was "rock solid", but I still get popping with certain movements, and especially sneezing. There's a lot going on in there beyond bone - in particular fascia that was disrupted, scar tissue that's formed. Ribs are like leaf springs, and have a...

I haven't - I have an appt with him on the 8th. This is definitely not the best time of year to be having complications. Meanwhile this morning I feel pretty good, but the usual routine is around noon the "terribles" (as I've come to call the feeling) will start to set in. I'll be at the...

I appreciate the tempered response - but this is definitely worth considering. Thank you.

good question Weaning down off of 25 mg of metropolol XR, currently on 12.5 mg/day after doing a week of 25 mg, 12.5 mg alternating. Still on .5 mg of klonopin at night, that's next on the list to get off of.

Has anyone experienced nausea returning a good while after surgery? Most of my daily nausea faded around 5-6 weeks after my aortic aneurysm repair. However about a week ago (15 weeks out) I've started experiencing daily nausea accompanied with a feeling I can only describe as a lump in my...

This driveway thing still gets me a bit - its funny the things you discover to be challenging that you had no idea would be. The stuff no one warns you about

Best of luck - you'll hit 40 and will be crushing life, with more perspective, motivation, and strength than you've ever had.

I went back to work way too early. I was going stir crazy and thought it would help. I would make it through a 6 hourish day and come home and collapse on the couch. I wouldn't leave it again until I moved to the bedroom. Whatever your short term disability is - max it out. I could've gone 8...

Its fascinating the difference in driving times. I was prepped for 4-6 weeks of no driving, and I was cleared to drive at 10 days! I might be slightly younger than average for these procedures, but that seemed pretty aggressive to me. In reality I waited until 3 weeks to drive, which was also...

Interesting - Mine was a valve sparring operation. The originally plan was to possible repair the valve but they ended up leaving it alone - and in fact, after reading the surgical report it looked as though there was no calcium build up or stenosis, just a very mild regurgitation. The...

Good points - I showed no other sign of infection, but that's a great caveat for those in similar situations. One thing I'd add too - I its crucial to understand what kind of closures we are talking about. For reference - here's what I had (the quarter is for scale) There were traditional...

I had significant pain radiating away from my sternum up through 12 to 13 weeks out (full median sternotomy). I'm quite thin, and the heads of the zip tie closures were visibly pushing out my skin on my chest, however the pain was most intense proximal to these areas, not right on top. My...

Yep that's me! Its always incredible the differences people have with their experiences on these procedures. One interesting things the Dr warned me about a lot was that younger men tend to have a much harder time with the pain than any other demographic of patients. Part of this is the fact...

Thank you all for your responses - I appreciate it a lot.

One interesting thing the surgeon said was that they were going to quote the risk to me at 1-3% for surgery, however that's a risk for a population of individuals, and given my specific state (young, highly active, etc) the risk would be far lower than even 1%. 20-30 years ago watchful waiting...