Today is my 4 month anniversary of my aortic valve replacement. Coincidently, it is also my 6 year anniversary here at work. Overall, I am very happy with the way things have progressed.
I am happy to report that it I did not have any post-surgery complications. After about 6 weeks, my wife noticed that my face was swollen and sure enough the scale confirmed I was retaining water (was up about 5 lbs). I received an echo and they did not see anything wrong. After a very light dose of Lasix, the swelling went away after many trips to the bathroom. After a few episodes of this, we determined that this was happening when I took in large amounts of sodium. These days, that rarely happens; even when I do consume large amounts of sodium (like tailgating at the Bears game this past weekend
), my body seems to be adjusting and I no longer swell up. I was very fortunate to have my wife around to notice this, she is a RN!
My scar is healing up nicely. I weaned myself off of the pain meds after about 4 weeks and took Motrin as needed. By 6 weeks, I was off of that as well. These days I only notice the incision when I see it in the mirror. Before surgery, I was very lethargic all the time and was getting bouts of night sweats. I have not had any night sweats and my energy levels are high.
I did not go through a formal cardiac rehab program. A friend of mine runs a cardiac program, so he provided me some guidelines. My “program” consisted of a daily walk and was up to a 4 mile walk by the 6 week mark. Due to the summer heat, most of these walks were done inside on a treadmill. My wife would join me to keep any eye on things and also monitor my blood pressure. I cannot thank all of these great friends that I have supporting me enough. The medical staff was great, but it was really these other folks - my cardiac rehab guy, online web posters for advice and friends that got me through the tough part..... getting back to normal.
My cardiologist gave me permission to start running again once I crossed the 8 week mark. His guidance was to keep things easy. On August 12th, I did my first run and did 2 X 1/2 mile segments. I have been progressing with the running and am on track to finish the week having run a total of 28 miles. Last Saturday I ran 8 miles and am going to be running 9 this Saturday. My cardiologist told me to run no more than 10 miles at a time, so my goal has been to run 10 miles on 10/29 as a birthday present to myself. Next spring I plan on running at least one half marathon. I hope that my pace continues to improve as they have slowly been doing since going back to running in August.
For those in the Chicagoland area (or if you want to fly in from anywhere else) looking to have this done, I highly recommend Dr. Jai Raman, and his team, at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
I am happy to report that it I did not have any post-surgery complications. After about 6 weeks, my wife noticed that my face was swollen and sure enough the scale confirmed I was retaining water (was up about 5 lbs). I received an echo and they did not see anything wrong. After a very light dose of Lasix, the swelling went away after many trips to the bathroom. After a few episodes of this, we determined that this was happening when I took in large amounts of sodium. These days, that rarely happens; even when I do consume large amounts of sodium (like tailgating at the Bears game this past weekend
), my body seems to be adjusting and I no longer swell up. I was very fortunate to have my wife around to notice this, she is a RN! My scar is healing up nicely. I weaned myself off of the pain meds after about 4 weeks and took Motrin as needed. By 6 weeks, I was off of that as well. These days I only notice the incision when I see it in the mirror. Before surgery, I was very lethargic all the time and was getting bouts of night sweats. I have not had any night sweats and my energy levels are high.
I did not go through a formal cardiac rehab program. A friend of mine runs a cardiac program, so he provided me some guidelines. My “program” consisted of a daily walk and was up to a 4 mile walk by the 6 week mark. Due to the summer heat, most of these walks were done inside on a treadmill. My wife would join me to keep any eye on things and also monitor my blood pressure. I cannot thank all of these great friends that I have supporting me enough. The medical staff was great, but it was really these other folks - my cardiac rehab guy, online web posters for advice and friends that got me through the tough part..... getting back to normal.
My cardiologist gave me permission to start running again once I crossed the 8 week mark. His guidance was to keep things easy. On August 12th, I did my first run and did 2 X 1/2 mile segments. I have been progressing with the running and am on track to finish the week having run a total of 28 miles. Last Saturday I ran 8 miles and am going to be running 9 this Saturday. My cardiologist told me to run no more than 10 miles at a time, so my goal has been to run 10 miles on 10/29 as a birthday present to myself. Next spring I plan on running at least one half marathon. I hope that my pace continues to improve as they have slowly been doing since going back to running in August.
For those in the Chicagoland area (or if you want to fly in from anywhere else) looking to have this done, I highly recommend Dr. Jai Raman, and his team, at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
