Oh, Thank you Paula,
I am very fortunate to be recovering so well and so quickly. It is due to the help I have gotten here at valvereplacement.com and all the wonderful folks here. They helped remove much of the fear, I was suffering.
I would have liked to consider the Ross procedure. My age (59) and weight (120 kg) are both outside the limits many surgeons like and I don't think most surgeons near me would be doing RP anyway.. I was not willing to go through the trouble and inconcienence of seeking surgery far remote from my home. We may not have national health insurance but we are limited by what our insurance supports in the local market.
My pet peeve has always been the unwillingness of the USA to get with the Metric system. Medical and scientific communities seem to have gone part way. Many doses and measures are Metric but body temperature is still expressed in English. Most of our schools teach the metric system so it will probably be 2 or 3 generations before it is more common here.
The problem is not learning the system(it is really a much simpler and more straight forward system) it is the translation back and forth. Most who grew up learning English system think Metric is harder but the reason is trying to convert back and forth, not operating in Metric only.
In the 1970's I was president of a manufacturing company here in the US and imported a lot of steel from Canada and Japan where their standard sizes were metric but of course those companys would produce to the English system standards for this market(money talks and that is why we can continue to demand special treatment for our silliness).
I proposed to my board of directors that our company go ahead and adopt the metric system since the US was soon to go on that standard(in fact it was ordered back then that the US be metric in about 10 years, but you see we still are not there yet). My bosses came close to firing me for that little suggestion, some thought it proved their concerns. I was too you and too much a rebel to run the company. Well, I lost the battle, it was not worth the fight.
Wow, what I just did is called "getting up on a soap box", making a point in any crowd that will listen. Sorry for the outburst.
You will do well with your surgery and we will all be here cheering you on. I know you will be on our calendar and get many well wishes.
Best wishes,
Bill
