Recent content by jimbob123

It's a one-off for you; your surgical team does it every day. Looking forward to hear the story in a day or two.

I had somehow missed this thread, but I'm happy from the very first post! I also have the Perimount valve, it's 5 months old, so I hope it lasts at least the 18 years of the original poster!

Whilst I was in hospital recovering from OHS, the guy opposite me in the ward was about to go for mitral valve surgery; he was an oncology consultant himself and had experience cardiac arrest the previous week whilst at work. Anyway, the medical staff came to his bed to take him down, we (in his...

I had a TOE last October prior to OHS for an AVR. I have since acquired a full copy of all my medical notes. My notes say the TOE was successful but was poorly tolerated, and the consultant did joke later that I should have been a wrestler. And yet....I have zero recollection. I lay on my side...

Jumping in here. Last September I got endocarditis, and by October I was in hospital prepping for surgery, with severe regurgitation. I had OHS and have a bovine repalcement aortic valve. My full story is here: https://www.valvereplacement.org/threads/endocarditis-leading-to-avr-my-story.889366/...

Wow, intruiging. For me, they gave me the local, then the sedative, and then I woke up four hours later, with zero recollection. I wonder if it's because I was so shattered from lack of sleep? The consultant did say that I put up a fight and that I was hard work, but I guess you put up a better...

https://www.valvereplacement.org/threads/endocarditis-leading-to-avr-my-story.889366/

I've watched lots of videos of surgery now, and a lot of the surgical time is opening and closing your chest, so I suspect having a CABG won't add a huge amount of time. It'll just give you a longer snooze. In terms of time, once you're on the ECMO machine (heart/lung bypass) it's estimated to...

When I had mine, the consultant put the little plastic tube in my mouth ("silence of the lambs" style), and connected up the sedative to my existing venflon/cannula. "We'll wait a few moments for this to take effect", he said. Those were the last words I heard, I have absolutely zero...

Keep positive. It's really good that all these things have been identified, and they can fix them all during the same surgery. It's quite a list you have, but from your perspective it's one operation and one recovery, and to get all those things fixed at the same time will be fantastic. When I...

I also had issues with veins. During my first two weeks I had 13 cannulas, they kept giving up. And that was just with amox and Fluclox! Before surgery I asked them to leave my central line in, which they did, and then five days after surgery I got a PICC so they removed the central. Even the...

A brief update to my story. Yesterday I went for another transthoracic echocardiogram, the first one since surgery. My shiny new cow valve is performing well, with no regurgitation, so that's a huge relief. The consultant who did yesterday's scan is the same person who saw me the first time...

I freaked out when I did that. I was wheeled through from the ward on "my" bed, but then when I slid across I realised the surgical bed was a) narrow, b) had padded sides, and c) was heated. I completely freaked, likening it to the gates of hell, and tried to escape. The anaesthetist said "I'll...

I went for tissue (bovine) and surgery was around 5 weeks ago (6th November). I'm home, walking (can walk for 45 mins with the dogs), and feeling mostly fine. I'm registered with cardio rehab and they've been very helpful, but I'm not doing any formal physio until I finish the antibiotics on...

I also took myself off pretty quickly. I was on Oxycodone 10mg, a pretty potent drug, oramorph, aspirin and paracaetamol. I dropped the oxycodone and oramorph after 3-4 days as I decided (rightly or wrongly) that I would only know if I was actually in pain if I wasn't masking it! So I stopped...