Recent content by UWMike

When I got out of ICU I was put into a room with another guy who was supposed to have the same surgery the day after mine. He had already been there for 3 weeks since his cardio said that his condition was severe enough that they couldn't let him leave the hospital. The day he was supposed to go...

I just made sure to always have a pillow with me and any time I had to sneeze I would squeeze that thing against my chest like it was the end of the world, then let 'er rip. Good times...

My feelings could have been summed up with the phrase "Que sera, sera"... but maybe that's because I was a young single guy with no baggage to speak of (no kids, and the only people I owed money to were my parents ;) ) Either way, I remember meeting briefly with an anesthesiologist about a week...

Got you beat by a couple of years :p If the nurses look anything like some of the ones I had then it's not all bad :cool: But seriously, sounds like there might be a silver lining to that wreck of yours. 6cm is starting to push towards the dangerous side of things so it's definitely good they...

I thought you said 'non-oldies' (some of us are under 35) :p I would say anything by Dan Mangan... but then I would recommend that to non- heart patients as well. Also, Man in the Mirror by MJ. I love that song. :)

Funny you should mention that, because I noticed the exact same thing :). After one happens, it get's my attention and I think "damn, not again" then 15 seconds later there will be another, and maybe one more after that, but as soon as I get back to doing whatever it was i was doing (and not...

Thanks for the reply! It's always re-assuring to hear it from someone else.

It's been a little while since I've been on here. I had a St. Jude mechanical valve put in 11 months ago and I've since noticed on occasion that every once in a while I'll have what I can only think to describe as a minor arrhythmia. It'll be very quick, usually a single double-beat...

Your condition sounds almost identical to what mine was before surgery, except I had started developing some symptoms (mainly chest-tightening and shortness of breath with physical activity). Like the others say, the waiting was the worst part. The last thing I remember before waking up was...

After surgery I was sent home with a months supply of metoprolol at 100mg/day. Three weeks later I asked my cardiologist about it and she told me to finish taking the ones I had and then she put me on 50mg/day. At 6 weeks post-op I met with the surgeon and asked his opinion on it. He said that...

Wow. Thanks for the replies. I've read a fair bit about how Warfarin is metabolized and how Vitamin-K interferes with that. I have been eating a few less "greens" than normal but that's just while I try to get in range to begin with, especially with these recent low test results. @lance, I did...

So I'm nearly 3 weeks post-op and starting to get a little anxious about this whole INR management thing. At discharge from hospital they told me that the range I should stick to is 2.5 to 3. At that time I was taking 4mg daily and at my first blood test 5 days after being discharged my INR came...

Having the Bentall procedure (replacing the ascending aorta along with the valve itself) shouldn't affect your recovery at all. I just had mine done a week ago and my aneurysm was 4.3 cm. Just got home from hospital today so I was in for a total of 6 days. I asked this same question before and...

Thanks. Sounds like something I'll have cleared up once the surgery is done.

To my fellow Canucks out here... I was wondering where exactly I can get one of these home monitoring systems from. Did you order them online or are they available through hospitals/drug stores/etc.?? The two I've seen most discussed are the INRatio and the CoaguChek XS so my question pertains...