samiam
New member
I’m a 64 year old man in good health, or so I thought. In 2005, Cleveland Clinic replaced my mitral valve with a bovine version that was supposed to have an average life of 20 years. Now, 9 years later I was having shortness of breath and A-fib. Many tests showed that valve had stenosis, causing an enlarged left atrium and needed to be replaced. So much for a 20 year average. Maybe that means some other person will be getting 30 years out of their valve. Good for them.
My wife and I started our research. We realized that mitral re-replacements made things real interesting. We spoke with Cleveland Clinic, who said they didn’t do robotic re-replacements. That threw us off for a bit and we signed up with Emory University Hospital in Atlanta to get a mechanical valve with a full sternontomy. I wasn’t about to go through the cutting any more. As we were waiting for the date, we got word of a Dr. Douglas Murphy at Emory Saint Joseph. He’s a pioneer on DaVinci robotics and has done many (hundreds?) mitral valves, including re-replacements. We saw him on October 1, 2014, after getting a CTA scan. He agreed it can be done, and were scheduled for early December. Part of the scheduling was the need to be off warfarin for 7 days.
On Monday afternoon, October 6, his coordinator called and said there was an opening for that Friday. They could work around the 7-day warfarin restriction. Pre-admission and testing was done Wednesday, with a 5 am showtime on Friday. The initial plan was surgery Friday, followed by a day or two in ICU, followed by 2-3 days in step-down, then released to the hotel for a few days, finally released home a few days later. Since we live a 6-hour drive to Emory, we made 14 days reservations at the Holiday Inn Express on Hammond/Perimeter. This was an excellent location, 1.5 miles from the hospital, easy access with a traffic light, and a good room rate including breakfast.
To be continued on the Post-Surgery Forum...
My wife and I started our research. We realized that mitral re-replacements made things real interesting. We spoke with Cleveland Clinic, who said they didn’t do robotic re-replacements. That threw us off for a bit and we signed up with Emory University Hospital in Atlanta to get a mechanical valve with a full sternontomy. I wasn’t about to go through the cutting any more. As we were waiting for the date, we got word of a Dr. Douglas Murphy at Emory Saint Joseph. He’s a pioneer on DaVinci robotics and has done many (hundreds?) mitral valves, including re-replacements. We saw him on October 1, 2014, after getting a CTA scan. He agreed it can be done, and were scheduled for early December. Part of the scheduling was the need to be off warfarin for 7 days.
On Monday afternoon, October 6, his coordinator called and said there was an opening for that Friday. They could work around the 7-day warfarin restriction. Pre-admission and testing was done Wednesday, with a 5 am showtime on Friday. The initial plan was surgery Friday, followed by a day or two in ICU, followed by 2-3 days in step-down, then released to the hotel for a few days, finally released home a few days later. Since we live a 6-hour drive to Emory, we made 14 days reservations at the Holiday Inn Express on Hammond/Perimeter. This was an excellent location, 1.5 miles from the hospital, easy access with a traffic light, and a good room rate including breakfast.
To be continued on the Post-Surgery Forum...
