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The PA asked me to hum while my central line was being pulled out of my neck. No humming for the chest tube and drain tube, but I remember they felt shorter coming out than I had expected; it was pretty quick and not that painful. The annoying thing is that the holes they left behind continued...

We are happy to hear from you and look forward to your next update!

When I found out that I might need mitral valve repair surgery, I started investigating, thinking that I might want to change insurance plans at the turn of the year and select a specialist in the Bay Area where I live. Circumstances forced me to get the surgery that same year, at Kaiser, with...

The hole where my chest tube had been placed continued to drain for three weeks after my surgery, which I hadn't expected. I kept it covered with gauze and surgical tape, and in time it healed completely. I pretended it was an arrow wound to make it seem cooler 😎.

And don't worry if it's two steps forward and one step back.

Kaiser is officially an HMO, which means that you can only see doctors within their system except under unusual circumstances. Their doctors all work in their medical offices, which are often physically co-located with their hospitals. It's a very convenient and integrated system. It is so large...

My mitral valve repair was at Kaiser in Santa Clara. My understanding is that, for mitral valve regurgitation (but not stenosis), repair is usually possible and is preferred over replacement. If you search the archives, you can find names of surgeons at Stanford, though I don't know if there...

Great photo! I've enjoyed some of Belleruth Naparstek's guided imagery exercises as well, especially the one called "Imagery for Healing."

Sorry, I don't know anything about the severity of atrial enlargement. I experienced something like what I described to you, with worsening regurgitation leading to shortness of breath, so that my surgery date was moved up. I had always thought that "shortness of breath" would feel like the...

I can't speak about the Afib, but the severe mitral regurgitation, if it gets worse, would cause noticeable symptoms of heart failure such as shortness of breath. If that occurs, you might need to have your surgery scheduled sooner (urgent but not necessarily emergency surgery). I don't think...

Anxiety can cause a surprising number of physical symptoms. Even if the source is "in your head" it's real to you. I once took a class on coping with anxiety/panic, and one thing we learned is how to calm down the sympathetic nervous system (which fires up when we feel threatened) and activate...

Crossing fingers for you that this is something easily treatable.

Glad you found your way here! In a way it can be a relief to have the waiting and worrying over with. Instead of hoping that the other shoe doesn't drop, you can deal with the event and move on.

We're so happy to have you here and posting. Thanks for all your contributions.

Hi "DrCooper," It sounds as though you have done your research and have a good medical/surgical team supporting you, and you know rationally that you are likely to do well with surgery and your future life. It's normal to be anxious about the unknown, and if you've been reading this forum for...

20 minutes of a crescent-shaped pattern of flickering black-and-white zigzags which starts small, grows, and finally disappears? If so, that's classic for optical migraines (the painless kind). They are disconcerting but harmless. Many people here have reported that they started having these, or...

I'm glad you resurrected this thread; I think it's a very valuable one. I think of this post-surgery anxiety as my brain trying to keep me safe by warning me about the dangers it learned about through experience. It's tuned too sensitively but it's just trying to help. The fact that normal...

People can say it's no big deal, but it's a big deal when it happens to you, especially if you haven't had major surgery before. If you're the kind of person for whom information is power, check out the pinned threads in the pre-surgery and post-surgery forums: Pre-surgery list of questions...

As I mentioned in one of the past threads, I started getting optical migraines (the painless kind, aura only) many years before my valve surgery. At the time I got one or two per year. Since the surgery I have gotten one or two per month. My cardiologist had not heard of this; I told him there...

I'm not convinced that the majority of us have experienced "pump head." The topic doesn't seem to come up very often. Of course, this is all anecdotal and based on impressions. We would need some kind of controlled study to give us real data. Anecdotally, I did not experience this.