Congratulations and thank you for being here…you’re an inspiration to all!
Ouch! Is she one of those who wondered how you could have the nerve to burden her with your health issues?Congrats ****. I’m 15 years and still clicking with a St Jude mechanical. Ex wife wished me dead at implant but I lived to spite her. I’ll have to live to 110 to match your record but I’m certain I will be an outlier on the life expectancy statistics too.
Chuck, thanks for your interest. I could write a book on the difficulties of getting old, old medical records. Remember, my surgery was the olden days of paper files and typewriters. The only record that was found was the "Operative Record" .....a one-page document that outlined the various procedures of the surgery. The only mention of the valve is "The valve was entirely excised, the route was measured and a #9 Starr-Edwards valve was the proper size"......that report spent more time explaining the wire size (#20) used to close the sternum than on the heart surgery itself. I did learn that the "sponge count was verified" which makes me feel better knowing they didn't leave a sponge in me.@dick0236, please correct me if I am remembering this wrong, but the only reason that you are not in the Guinness Book for the longest lived valve is that you could not show evidence from the hosptital, in that they don't keep medical records that long.
And I thought my 24 years with Mitral and Aortic St. Judes was pretty good! Maybe Guinness has a separate category for DVRs.Joe DiMaggio had his 56-game hitting streak, and you have your 56-year valve streak. Not sure which is more impressive, but damn sure which is more inspirational. Congratulations.
Enter your email address to join: