S
Susan BAV
...because a year ago today, we had to trot up to Los Angeles to the hospital for my pre-op tests and such. My AVR post-op anniversary is tomorrow. I can hardly recall how badly I felt then, when my bicuspid aortic valve was failing, because I feel so much better now! But I was extremely ill pre-op.
My inlaws came out for the surgery from the midwest, and our son who lives out-of-state flew out for it, and our other son who lives at home and my husband were both there also.
The surgery took longer than my husband had expected but everything went well. Getting off the ventilator was a traumatic experience I hope to never repeat though.
Although I felt rotten after the surgery, I kept expecting for them to get me up that same day, like I had read here, but they didn't get me up and they kept me in the special cardiac unit (I don't recall the formal name for it but it was just down the hall from the initial surgery recovery unit) until two or three days later because my kidneys weren't doing their job, probably because my blood pressure was so low. I was still getting my hypertensive medications at first but I was no longer hypertensive with the new valve; another bonus!
So on the third day after the surgery, they sent me to the regular cardiac surgery recovery floor. And the third day after that, I got to come home, a week after the surgery!
I began A-fib that day but I didn't know what it was. A day or two later, my local doctor found me in A-fib at 198 beats per minute on his EKG. They wanted to hospitalize me immediately but we didn't want to go to this local hospital. The medication they put me on didn't work. A week after I was released from the LA hospital, I was readmitted for the A-fib and put on a medication which halted it.
Three days later, I was happily released again from the hospital and we got home on a Friday. We were having a fierce dry wind from the east called a Santa Ana wind (Devil Wind) on Saturday when the fires began to rage through our county. Then, unbeknownst to us, a huge fire began nearer our home. It was two o'clock Sunday morning when a neighbor beat on the back of our house screaming, "Fire, fire, fire," waking us up. It was pretty terrifying and it got worse as the fire came closer. There were no formal evacuations at that time in the rural area that we live so as people fled their homes, they honked their car horns. We could hear propane tanks releasing and blowing up and various trees grown locally, such as palm and eucalyptus, blew up from the heat and fire. We had a lot of vehicles to evacuate and friends and neighbors came to help. My son gathered up our family albums and portraits and packed them and the pets we could gather into our vehicles. I was fairly useless, being two and a half weeks post-op, except that I determined I would remain calm.
When we finally evacuated, we were sure that our home was going to be lost. It was just absolutely shocking. Joyfully, however, we only lost a shed and some trees on the edge of our property because our irrigated orange grove evidently halted the flames. And shortly after we left, fire crews from surrounding communities arrived. Somewhere around 2500 homes were lost during those fires and more than twice that many out-buildings and more than twice that many vehicles were lost. Not to mention the horrible tragedy of those who died fleeing the flames.
Air quality was extremely poor for weeks following the fires so I couldn't walk as much as I should have. But, at this point, things are relatively well. I am so glad that I stumbled across this site well over a year ago. Reading the stories of others helped me to realize how extremely symptomatic I was. Because the symptoms had occurred gradually for me, I had previously thought that I just wasn't aging very well. So my husband and I researched the condition more fully and realized the cardiac care I was getting pre-op was not sufficient. We found more experienced physicians.
Thanks to Hank for founding this site and to Ross for moderating it and to everyone for posting their experiences. And, if you haven't yet posted your story, please think about it. Someone else's AVR story made a difference to me and yours may make a difference to someone also.
Best wishes and I hope to meet some of you at the VR.COM reunion!
My inlaws came out for the surgery from the midwest, and our son who lives out-of-state flew out for it, and our other son who lives at home and my husband were both there also.
The surgery took longer than my husband had expected but everything went well. Getting off the ventilator was a traumatic experience I hope to never repeat though.
Although I felt rotten after the surgery, I kept expecting for them to get me up that same day, like I had read here, but they didn't get me up and they kept me in the special cardiac unit (I don't recall the formal name for it but it was just down the hall from the initial surgery recovery unit) until two or three days later because my kidneys weren't doing their job, probably because my blood pressure was so low. I was still getting my hypertensive medications at first but I was no longer hypertensive with the new valve; another bonus!
So on the third day after the surgery, they sent me to the regular cardiac surgery recovery floor. And the third day after that, I got to come home, a week after the surgery!
I began A-fib that day but I didn't know what it was. A day or two later, my local doctor found me in A-fib at 198 beats per minute on his EKG. They wanted to hospitalize me immediately but we didn't want to go to this local hospital. The medication they put me on didn't work. A week after I was released from the LA hospital, I was readmitted for the A-fib and put on a medication which halted it.
Three days later, I was happily released again from the hospital and we got home on a Friday. We were having a fierce dry wind from the east called a Santa Ana wind (Devil Wind) on Saturday when the fires began to rage through our county. Then, unbeknownst to us, a huge fire began nearer our home. It was two o'clock Sunday morning when a neighbor beat on the back of our house screaming, "Fire, fire, fire," waking us up. It was pretty terrifying and it got worse as the fire came closer. There were no formal evacuations at that time in the rural area that we live so as people fled their homes, they honked their car horns. We could hear propane tanks releasing and blowing up and various trees grown locally, such as palm and eucalyptus, blew up from the heat and fire. We had a lot of vehicles to evacuate and friends and neighbors came to help. My son gathered up our family albums and portraits and packed them and the pets we could gather into our vehicles. I was fairly useless, being two and a half weeks post-op, except that I determined I would remain calm.
When we finally evacuated, we were sure that our home was going to be lost. It was just absolutely shocking. Joyfully, however, we only lost a shed and some trees on the edge of our property because our irrigated orange grove evidently halted the flames. And shortly after we left, fire crews from surrounding communities arrived. Somewhere around 2500 homes were lost during those fires and more than twice that many out-buildings and more than twice that many vehicles were lost. Not to mention the horrible tragedy of those who died fleeing the flames.
Air quality was extremely poor for weeks following the fires so I couldn't walk as much as I should have. But, at this point, things are relatively well. I am so glad that I stumbled across this site well over a year ago. Reading the stories of others helped me to realize how extremely symptomatic I was. Because the symptoms had occurred gradually for me, I had previously thought that I just wasn't aging very well. So my husband and I researched the condition more fully and realized the cardiac care I was getting pre-op was not sufficient. We found more experienced physicians.
Thanks to Hank for founding this site and to Ross for moderating it and to everyone for posting their experiences. And, if you haven't yet posted your story, please think about it. Someone else's AVR story made a difference to me and yours may make a difference to someone also.
Best wishes and I hope to meet some of you at the VR.COM reunion!
