dreamwarrior13
Active member
Not sure where or how to do this as I'm not usually much of a forum kinda gal, but I felt like I should introduce myself somehow before just running around replying to people and stuff. So... hello!
My name is Kim. To make a rather long story short, I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve, which my doctors detected when I was about five years old. Being too young at the time to understand, I was told I had a "sticky heart valve" that made my heart sound funny to doctors but was otherwise harmless. Fast forward almost twenty years ahead to October 2014, when I started feeling wrong somehow. I had anxiety-like symptoms, including near panic attacks and air hunger, and honestly worried I was developing a panic disorder. I'd just moved the year before so I hadn't bother to find a new doctor until the symptoms appeared. When I found one, he sent me to a cardiologist -- the first I'd seen in many, many years -- who found my valve was leaking badly and my ascending aorta and root were dilated.
My condition was (finally) explained to me, as was the fact that I needed surgery pronto, and in the end I chose to get the On-X mechanical valve, hoping never to need heart surgery again. After a very long December I had a successful surgery in January, which I recovered from (and in some ways am still recovering from) without any major complications so far -- knock on wood.
And here we are today. I started a blog not long ago about living with a mechanical heart valve -- figured I'd put my experience to good use -- and recently thought it might be also helpful for me and for others if I also joined this here forum, which I probably scanned through several dozen times while waiting anxiously for my surgery.
So, yeah. Hi.
My name is Kim. To make a rather long story short, I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve, which my doctors detected when I was about five years old. Being too young at the time to understand, I was told I had a "sticky heart valve" that made my heart sound funny to doctors but was otherwise harmless. Fast forward almost twenty years ahead to October 2014, when I started feeling wrong somehow. I had anxiety-like symptoms, including near panic attacks and air hunger, and honestly worried I was developing a panic disorder. I'd just moved the year before so I hadn't bother to find a new doctor until the symptoms appeared. When I found one, he sent me to a cardiologist -- the first I'd seen in many, many years -- who found my valve was leaking badly and my ascending aorta and root were dilated.
My condition was (finally) explained to me, as was the fact that I needed surgery pronto, and in the end I chose to get the On-X mechanical valve, hoping never to need heart surgery again. After a very long December I had a successful surgery in January, which I recovered from (and in some ways am still recovering from) without any major complications so far -- knock on wood.
And here we are today. I started a blog not long ago about living with a mechanical heart valve -- figured I'd put my experience to good use -- and recently thought it might be also helpful for me and for others if I also joined this here forum, which I probably scanned through several dozen times while waiting anxiously for my surgery.
So, yeah. Hi.
