T
The Bionic Duo
Hi everyone
I feel as if I already know all of you as I have been lurking here since just after my husband had his Aoritic valve replaced last January. I have stayed away from joining forums because I am a computer technician with multiple email address and I get a ton of spam mail that I can barely keep up on, but earthlink has come up with a pretty good spam blocker (its almost too good, it blocked a message from my eldest son the other day) so I decided to finally join.
I guess some history is in order. Last December 30 my husband Bob passed out in our living room, and landed up in the emergency room. After questioning, and I assume, listening to his heart (I was hung up in admitting while they were doing this) they called in a cardiologist and he immediately asked him about his heart murmur. My husband told him he had always had a heart murmur and between the two of us we kind of filled him in on his past history. Even I didn't know that he had been having SOB whenever he excercised heavily, I did know that he had colapsed when he was in the Navy (when he was quite young, and long before I met him), and that for the past year or so he had been coming home and sleeping almost every afternoon. Well after an hour or more of extensive questioning the Dr decided to keep him overnight in the hospital, and to run some test on him in the AM. He must have given us some indication of what he though was wrong (I'm a little fogging there, that was one traumatic evening) because when I finally got home I went immediately to the web to do some research.
Many years ago I had been a vocational nurse so I knew the questions the cardio kept asking him over and over had some significance, and when I looked up aortic valve steniousis (sp) I discovered that he had been having almost all the classic symptoms. (I wish I had found this sight, but alas I did not come across it until after his surgery.) He landed up in the hospital for five days, and all the tests they ran comfirmed that he needed a valve replacement ASAP. Unfortunately they couldn't do the surgery until he had gotton over the upper respirtory infection he had, so they sent him home, he came back two weeks later and got a St Jude mechanical valve put in.
In a way I am glad he did not have any time in the waiting room, but I have sure come to realize how lucky he was. First I am rarely home in the evening on a week night, I usually work from 1-10 PM, but the community college I work for gives me so many holidays that I was able to take a two week break during the holidays, so I was home that evening. Second he had been having symptoms for a long time and his murmur was evidently quite loud--his PCP kept sending him to have stress tests--but she never sent him to a cardio to have the murmur evaluated. (That PCP is history, she missed other medical problems he had as well.) When I think of all the times he could have passed out the same way he did that evening I get goose bumps.
Oh I guess I should explain the screen name, I am going in to have my left knee replaced next week, so now we will both have bionic parts.
Anyway thats about all for now, this is long winded enough.
Joan
I feel as if I already know all of you as I have been lurking here since just after my husband had his Aoritic valve replaced last January. I have stayed away from joining forums because I am a computer technician with multiple email address and I get a ton of spam mail that I can barely keep up on, but earthlink has come up with a pretty good spam blocker (its almost too good, it blocked a message from my eldest son the other day) so I decided to finally join.
I guess some history is in order. Last December 30 my husband Bob passed out in our living room, and landed up in the emergency room. After questioning, and I assume, listening to his heart (I was hung up in admitting while they were doing this) they called in a cardiologist and he immediately asked him about his heart murmur. My husband told him he had always had a heart murmur and between the two of us we kind of filled him in on his past history. Even I didn't know that he had been having SOB whenever he excercised heavily, I did know that he had colapsed when he was in the Navy (when he was quite young, and long before I met him), and that for the past year or so he had been coming home and sleeping almost every afternoon. Well after an hour or more of extensive questioning the Dr decided to keep him overnight in the hospital, and to run some test on him in the AM. He must have given us some indication of what he though was wrong (I'm a little fogging there, that was one traumatic evening) because when I finally got home I went immediately to the web to do some research.
Many years ago I had been a vocational nurse so I knew the questions the cardio kept asking him over and over had some significance, and when I looked up aortic valve steniousis (sp) I discovered that he had been having almost all the classic symptoms. (I wish I had found this sight, but alas I did not come across it until after his surgery.) He landed up in the hospital for five days, and all the tests they ran comfirmed that he needed a valve replacement ASAP. Unfortunately they couldn't do the surgery until he had gotton over the upper respirtory infection he had, so they sent him home, he came back two weeks later and got a St Jude mechanical valve put in.
In a way I am glad he did not have any time in the waiting room, but I have sure come to realize how lucky he was. First I am rarely home in the evening on a week night, I usually work from 1-10 PM, but the community college I work for gives me so many holidays that I was able to take a two week break during the holidays, so I was home that evening. Second he had been having symptoms for a long time and his murmur was evidently quite loud--his PCP kept sending him to have stress tests--but she never sent him to a cardio to have the murmur evaluated. (That PCP is history, she missed other medical problems he had as well.) When I think of all the times he could have passed out the same way he did that evening I get goose bumps.
Oh I guess I should explain the screen name, I am going in to have my left knee replaced next week, so now we will both have bionic parts.
Anyway thats about all for now, this is long winded enough.Joan
