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Guest
First I'd like to thank everyone here at ValveReplacement. I discovered your wonderful site in August when I found out I needed a valve replacement. Reading all of the posts that I could helped me so much to deal with the impending surgery. Thank you all so much for sharing your very appreciated stories and your extensive knowledge.
I thought I would pay it forward and share my story in case it resonates with someone and can help .
My name is Susan, I'm a 55 year old female who had a slight murmur my entire life. It was so slight that some doctors couldn't even hear it. Well at this year's annual physical (admittedly it had been 2 years since my last visit) my family doctor looked surprised because my slight murmur was now huge!
She sent me for an echo which showed severe valve stenosis, a very very bad pressure gradient and a 4.8 Aneurysm. She sent me right away to a fantastic Cardiac Surgeon at a fantastic heart hospital about 45 minutes from me. She didn't even set me up with a cardiologist, she said the most important thing was to get to an excellent cardio-thoracic surgeon so that's what I did.
The surgeon wanted to set up the surgery with the next 8 weeks, in the meantime he set me up with a cardiologist and had an angiogram and TEE done. Turns out that the aneurysm was 6.1cm and extended around the aortic arch with bulges up to 7cm!
Surgery was scheduled and done and I'm now 10 days post a 10 hour surgery and home recovering!
I'd like to say to anyone reading this who is facing this surgery that it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be. Yes, the first two days were awful, well actually for me the first day (the day of surgery, Wednesday) I was out during surgery from early morning until sometime in the middle of the nigh that night. I don't remember waking up then or the breathing tube but apparently when I woke up I decided I was leaving and had to be strapped down and hurt my arm a bit trying to leave, apparently I kept saying that we had to be practical and go for a walk...... if you knew me you would know how "me" this is, LOL! Actually, I'm very glad I have no memory of this because I've been told there were curse words involved!
The day after surgery I remember regaining consciousness around 10am but really only remember the day partially and slept through Thursday night. I wasn't happy because I had to wear an oxygen mask that day because the sedative they gave me the night before (in order to quiet me down from leaving the CICU to take a walk) didn't agree with me and caused some issues. So that day for me was bad, pulling off a mask that they kept putting back on, and I remember being very thirsty but they wouldn't give me anything to drink, just an occasional ice chip. Finally later in the day they brought me some jello, I took one bite and thought I would puke, it tasted like some kind of metalic vomit. I then slept through the night.
Fiday I woke up and they got me up, moved about my CICU room and sat me in a chair. This felt great, but foods were still pretty bad tasting, things either tasted like metal or dry cardboard. All I could eat really was Italian ice and frozen yogurt but I think that was because it soothed my sore throat, it still tasted icky. On Friday I realized that I wasn't in pain. I wasn't allowed any pain killers because of my reaction to the sedatives so I was feeling whatever there was to feel and quite honestly I didn't feel any pain. Well that's not entirely true, my right arm hurt a bit from fighting with the nurses the night after surgery and my throat was a bit sore from the breathing tube. But hey, after such a long and frankly brutal surgery I am very impressed by the lack of pain.
Oh, one more pain issue was the draining tubes, more uncomfortable really rather than painful. They made it hard to cough or breath. Once they came out on Saturday I felt good enough to go home!
Something happened to food on Saturday also, all of a sudden food tasted good again! Not all food but for some reason all dairy tasted great so I pigged out all day on dairy products. Then by the end of the day all food was back to tasting normal.
Pacemaker lines came out on Sunday
I left ICU on Monday and went home 2 days later on Wednesday. I probably could have gone home a couple of days sooner but it took time to get my blood INR levels up.
All in all, considering that the surgery is a life saver, the experience was not so bad. I wouldn't want to do it again but it wasn't the horror I expected it to be. If you can grin and bear the first couple of days then it gets dramatically better each day.
Right now I'm just glad it's over and I'm taking it easy, waiting out the next six weeks of healing! Thanks again to everyone!
Susan
I thought I would pay it forward and share my story in case it resonates with someone and can help .
My name is Susan, I'm a 55 year old female who had a slight murmur my entire life. It was so slight that some doctors couldn't even hear it. Well at this year's annual physical (admittedly it had been 2 years since my last visit) my family doctor looked surprised because my slight murmur was now huge!
She sent me for an echo which showed severe valve stenosis, a very very bad pressure gradient and a 4.8 Aneurysm. She sent me right away to a fantastic Cardiac Surgeon at a fantastic heart hospital about 45 minutes from me. She didn't even set me up with a cardiologist, she said the most important thing was to get to an excellent cardio-thoracic surgeon so that's what I did.
The surgeon wanted to set up the surgery with the next 8 weeks, in the meantime he set me up with a cardiologist and had an angiogram and TEE done. Turns out that the aneurysm was 6.1cm and extended around the aortic arch with bulges up to 7cm!
Surgery was scheduled and done and I'm now 10 days post a 10 hour surgery and home recovering!
I'd like to say to anyone reading this who is facing this surgery that it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be. Yes, the first two days were awful, well actually for me the first day (the day of surgery, Wednesday) I was out during surgery from early morning until sometime in the middle of the nigh that night. I don't remember waking up then or the breathing tube but apparently when I woke up I decided I was leaving and had to be strapped down and hurt my arm a bit trying to leave, apparently I kept saying that we had to be practical and go for a walk...... if you knew me you would know how "me" this is, LOL! Actually, I'm very glad I have no memory of this because I've been told there were curse words involved!
The day after surgery I remember regaining consciousness around 10am but really only remember the day partially and slept through Thursday night. I wasn't happy because I had to wear an oxygen mask that day because the sedative they gave me the night before (in order to quiet me down from leaving the CICU to take a walk) didn't agree with me and caused some issues. So that day for me was bad, pulling off a mask that they kept putting back on, and I remember being very thirsty but they wouldn't give me anything to drink, just an occasional ice chip. Finally later in the day they brought me some jello, I took one bite and thought I would puke, it tasted like some kind of metalic vomit. I then slept through the night.
Fiday I woke up and they got me up, moved about my CICU room and sat me in a chair. This felt great, but foods were still pretty bad tasting, things either tasted like metal or dry cardboard. All I could eat really was Italian ice and frozen yogurt but I think that was because it soothed my sore throat, it still tasted icky. On Friday I realized that I wasn't in pain. I wasn't allowed any pain killers because of my reaction to the sedatives so I was feeling whatever there was to feel and quite honestly I didn't feel any pain. Well that's not entirely true, my right arm hurt a bit from fighting with the nurses the night after surgery and my throat was a bit sore from the breathing tube. But hey, after such a long and frankly brutal surgery I am very impressed by the lack of pain.
Oh, one more pain issue was the draining tubes, more uncomfortable really rather than painful. They made it hard to cough or breath. Once they came out on Saturday I felt good enough to go home!
Something happened to food on Saturday also, all of a sudden food tasted good again! Not all food but for some reason all dairy tasted great so I pigged out all day on dairy products. Then by the end of the day all food was back to tasting normal.
Pacemaker lines came out on Sunday
I left ICU on Monday and went home 2 days later on Wednesday. I probably could have gone home a couple of days sooner but it took time to get my blood INR levels up.
All in all, considering that the surgery is a life saver, the experience was not so bad. I wouldn't want to do it again but it wasn't the horror I expected it to be. If you can grin and bear the first couple of days then it gets dramatically better each day.
Right now I'm just glad it's over and I'm taking it easy, waiting out the next six weeks of healing! Thanks again to everyone!
Susan
