Members of these fora:
I have been reading for the past two weeks or so and am grateful to have found answers to all the questions I came home from the hospital with - as well as a place to feel not quite so alone.
For the record: I am a 49 year old solo parent of a fifteen year old. On March 9 I experienced tearing/ripping in my chest that turned out to be an acute aortal dissection. Yep, I'm lucky that the ER doctor was dead-on with the diagnosis.
I don't remember being transferred to the largest teaching hospital in my county.
End result: Transferred and directly into surgery. Bovine aortal valve, hemi something, coronary artery bypass graft (dissection tore into coronary artery?). Oh, and lots of dacron. Total some eight hours I'm told, though I remember nothing.
Home now three weeks. At five weeks post-op, I've found a good cardiologist and am up to a mile (between 1.0 -1.5, actually) a day walking, am on lopressor (50mg TID) and ramipril (2.5mg).
Prior to what my teen calls "the really bad thing" I was hypertensive but "medically controlled." Ha. Other than this, I had no symptoms or obvious risk factors.
Grateful to be alive, grateful to find most post-surgical cognitive hiccups are fading.
Laura
I have been reading for the past two weeks or so and am grateful to have found answers to all the questions I came home from the hospital with - as well as a place to feel not quite so alone.
For the record: I am a 49 year old solo parent of a fifteen year old. On March 9 I experienced tearing/ripping in my chest that turned out to be an acute aortal dissection. Yep, I'm lucky that the ER doctor was dead-on with the diagnosis.
I don't remember being transferred to the largest teaching hospital in my county.
End result: Transferred and directly into surgery. Bovine aortal valve, hemi something, coronary artery bypass graft (dissection tore into coronary artery?). Oh, and lots of dacron. Total some eight hours I'm told, though I remember nothing.
Home now three weeks. At five weeks post-op, I've found a good cardiologist and am up to a mile (between 1.0 -1.5, actually) a day walking, am on lopressor (50mg TID) and ramipril (2.5mg).
Prior to what my teen calls "the really bad thing" I was hypertensive but "medically controlled." Ha. Other than this, I had no symptoms or obvious risk factors.
Grateful to be alive, grateful to find most post-surgical cognitive hiccups are fading.
Laura