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Hi Kathy, Are you talking about the San Francisco Bay Area? If so, Stanford is probably the most highly rated hospital in the area for heart surgery, and UCSF is highly rated as well. Those are not exactly close to Northern Nevada, though. I live in the area but my experience is with Kaiser...

If you do a Google search (not this site's search) using terms such as "site:valvereplacement.org cleveland clinic surgeon", you should be able to find what you are looking for. The Cleveland Clinic's website has lots of information for people who may wish to travel there from out of town for...

I did some research on how much experience surgeons needed when I was in the waiting room. This data is for mitral valve surgery (repairs vs. replacement, and minimally invasive vs. sternotomy), but I imagine the required experience is similar for other valve surgeries. From...

Hi Dixitworld, Only your cardiologist can give you real answers about when you should have surgery. You will get support and information about experiences here on this forum, but we can't tell you what would be best for your personal health situation. It sounds like you have already talked to...

That level of anxiety doesn't seem to be the kind of thing you can reason your way out of with positive thinking. As mentioned above, anti-anxiety medication from a doctor could help. And you could look into therapy (especially cognitive-behavioral therapy). A meditation class could also be...

I got a Fitbit Charge HR for Christmas. It's good enough for tracking steps, but I've found its heart rate monitoring to be quite inaccurate, especially at higher activity/heart rate levels. I can get my heart rate up above 150 on the treadmill (per manual 10-second pulse check and also using...

Hi Josh, I don't know if you've been getting professional help for your panics and anxiety, but help is definitely available. Kaiser in my area offers a class called "Panic Recovery Group" as well as a class focusing on general anxiety. The workbook for the Panic class was "An End To Panic," by...

I had mild mitral valve prolapse for decades. Even when it progressed to moderate and then severe, I never had any chest pain from it. That's one anecdatum :).

The recommendations have changed over time. I used to premedicate for cleanings even though I only had mitral valve prolapse. That recommendation was removed a few years ago. Even though I have now had a mitral valve repair, with implanted ring and chords, my cardiologist does not recommend...

Steve, those are words of wisdom. I am copying and saving them. Thanks for sharing your realistic and positive perspective.

Hi Carnelian, I had people staying with me for the first three weeks or so after surgery, but went back to living alone after that. It was no problem as soon as I was allowed to drive again, and friends helped me out in the interim. Many people on this forum have posted about how helpful...

I've been getting these painless optical migraines for about 20 years, starting long before my surgery. I used to get one or two per year. Since the surgery, I get one or two per month. As Paleowoman said, there are many similar anecdotes in the archives. So they may not go away for you, but...

Here are the AHA/ACC guidelines on when surgery is recommended: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2017/03/14/CIR.0000000000000503. (Sorry, I'm having trouble figuring out how to convert the URLto a live link.)

It seems like a circle of life, with those new members who stick around becoming the next generation of old members.

Our messages crossed... To start with, waking up with a breathing tube is strange. It helped me to know not to fight it, but to try to breathe with it. Once the tube was out, breathing wasn't hard. A lot of things hurt, but not badly... I'm pretty wimpy about pain, but I don't have memories of...

If you've read the sticky threads and the post-surgery stories in the archives, you should be well-prepared for the hospital experience. At the moment I can't think of anything that I wish I had known ahead of time. The forum prepared me well. For the post-surgery experience, I would say to...

I see lots of people looking down at their phones, which is probably setting them up for neck problems ("text neck").

Hi HopefulHeart, I haven't heard about off-pump surgery for valve or aneurysm repairs, which doesn't mean it isn't being looked into. But I would say that surgery is a scary prospect and it's easy to seize on one aspect of it, like the pump, and obsess about those risks. Many, many people have...

Congratulations from a fellow member of the Class of August 2015! I suspect that the emotional recovery follows a path similar to that of physical recovery, only slower. On the physical side, I kept feeling much better and thinking I was pretty much recovered, and then a few weeks or months...

My stepfather is now 90 and has had a mechanical mitral valve for 14 years. He did very well on warfarin without complications until the last year or so. He had issues from a TURP (prostate procedure) a number of years ago which required him to self-catheterize on a regular basis. That was OK...