Hello & Thanks from a New Member!

[Sean75GB]

Greetings all, just wanted to drop a quick note to introduce myself and say thanks for all the great information provided here. Here's my scoop, just turned 37 last month, was diagnosed with a bicuspid aortic valve w/severe regurgitation back in Nov 2011 coupled with an ascending aortic aneuryism. Experienced some strange back pain in late Feb, cardiologist ordered a CT scan, turns out the aneuyrsm had some significant growth in the previous couple months. He had a surgeon contact me that night and I had the surgery 2 days later. I ended up with a St. Judes Mechanical valve and the aorta resection to repair the aneurysm. Everything went smooth and I feel pretty good to this point. I'm about 8 weeks out from surgery. Like most people it seems, my most immediate concern is figuring out the warfarin treatment...just seems like there's conflicting information everywhere on the matter. Anyway, i'm sure I'll be browsing this forum quite a bit and posting often. Thanks again for the great information. Regards, Sean

 

[dick0236]

Hi Sean, welcome to a forum that can answer of lot of your questions. I suggest you spend some time in the anti-coagulation threads/posts. Warfarin/Comadin has been thoroughly discussed, from all points of view.

 

[neil]

welcome aboard sean

 

[TheGymGuy]

Please post up as you have questions. Folks here are beyond nice and very knowledgeable. Also, there is a Anti-Coag. forum here and it has lots of good info about this sort of thing.

 

[Greg a]

WELCOME to our OHS family...hope you are still walking and eating wisely

 

[nngbwh]

Howdy, Sean. Welcome aboard VR.

 

[Jkm7]

Welcome, Sean.
Happy you found us but sorry for the reason.

The Anti-Coag forum on this site is loaded with information. These are the people who have used this medication for years and have successfully mastered staying safe while using it. Read back the old posts from even several years back and you will get an excellent coumadin education.

If you are with a Coumadin Clinic/Manager who limits what you eat and tells you what your dose is and expects you to stay in range, all they are doing is forcing you to prove them right.

You need to be consistent in your diet and activity levels, within reason, and they need to dose your diet - you should not diet the dose. You have to live on this the restt of your life. If you enjoy broccoli, eat it but do so consisently a few times a week. If you like coleslaw (cabbage), have it.... but do so regularly. Even a glass or wine or beer is fine for most people. You cannot go without for a month and suddenly drink a bottle, but a glass with dinner is almost always fine for most people.

If your coumadin manager has not gotten updated, current education on coumadin, find a clinic/doctor/management who is more recently educated to 'dosing the diet'.

Hopefully you'll get it smoothed out with help here.
This is an amazingly knowledgeable group of very helpful, caring people.

Their kindness and knowledge gave me huge help getting through two OHS in four years.

 

[Sean75GB]

Thanks everyone for the helpful posts and kind words. I actually do have a question now. This afternoon I just had my first echo following the surgery and the news isn't quite what I expected. My cardiologist said my valve is still leaking (minimal to moderate). He said it wasn't necessarily uncommon and don't lose any sleep over it but It still really concerns me. He said there's likely a problem with a stich and it probably won't get worse and theres a chance it could go away if the scarring covers it. Does anyone have any experience with this type of situation? One main reason I went with the mechanical is so I wouldn't have to do this again (hopefully at least). Thanks for the advice.

 

[Tovah]

I just wanted to welcome you, Sean.

This is a wonderful group.

I'm still fairly new to all of this, so not much expertise yet, but the people on this board are the very best.

 

[DebbyA]

I don't have any direct experience, but in your situation I'd be calling the surgeon's office and asking the surgeon to review the echo (unless your cardiologist did that already). How long have you been seeing your cardiologist and did you have the echo done by the same tech before surgery?

 

[Sarah_Louise]

Hi Sean,
Welcome to the boards,
Glad your op went well,
After my AVR (mechanical) i also had a mild-moderate murmer over the aortic valve and found out like you at my first echo after the op, i lived with it for 5 years would have been longer but i had lots of problem with clots, so needed it changed anyway,
So it is possible to live as normal with a leak on the new valve
Love Sarah xxx