normofthenorth
Well-known member
I'm pretty new here, posting from Toronto, Canada. My GP (PCP) noticed a murmur ~5-6 years ago, which led to me hooking up with a Cardiologist, getting periodic stress and non-stress echo cardiograms to monitor my BAV. There was a CT scan or two thrown in, too.
Meanwhile, I was a super-active 60-something athlete. Lots of bicycling around town, always took stairs 2-at-a-time on the run, and played competitive beach and court volleyball (usually with fewer than 6 per team) with a bunch of 30-somethings.
If you'd asked me 10 years ago to name the part of my body I worried about the LEAST, I might have mentioned my heart!
So, even with the stenosis and regurg numbers gradually "going south", my Cardiologist didn't have much hope of convincing me to go for OHS while I was still having so much fun beating up my body. He did introduce me to a Cardiac Surgeon, and I'd met with him twice. He was also content to have me wait to develop symptoms.
[Here's a little video clip from my mental scrapbook, extreme yet typical: Two or three years ago, 3 beach-volleyball buddies of mine (all in their 20s or 30s) and I rented an indoor volleyball court for a Saturday afternoon, at a place where we'd never played before. They had 5 courts, and we expected to bump into some players we knew, or at least that we wanted to play some 4-on-4 ball with or against. But no! There was only one other court in use, and the players on it were nowhere near our "speed".
So instead of playing 4-on-4, we split into two teams and started playing 2-on-2. We swapped the players around until we made two teams that were well balanced. We played and we played, hard, with no more timeouts than to have a drink of water and sometimes a granola bar between games.
We were all playing on the edge of exhaustion. Two-on-two beach volleyball is a very brutal game for anybody! After about 2.5 hours (pout of 3 hrs total), my (37-year-old) teammate and I were on a bit of a streak, with me serving. The ball came back to my teammate, who mis-played it -- he totally "pooched" it. While huffing and puffing violently, he came out with an apology: "I'm sorry, Norm, but I just needed 5 more minutes to catch my breath before you served!" That tickled me so much, I expect to remember it for the rest of my life!
]
Around 3 weeks ago, I had an experience that was remarkably ironic: Based on the gradual decline of my BAVR, I'd started assuming that I'd have it replaced sometime this month (Nov.). But by mid-Oct., I was still asymptomatic and feeling fine, so I wasn't so sure any more.
Cardiologist's appointment, to have an Echo and discuss the Stress Echo I'd done a few months earlier. I'd lasted maybe 8:45 before hitting my target pulse rate, no problems with any of the readings except the gradual decline of the BAVR. It wasn't quite as good as the one I did 6 months earlier (maybe 9:15 or so), but in-between I'd torn my left Achilles tendon (my SECOND!) and gotten completely out of shape, so it was pretty good. Cardio agrees that we can postpone the OHS, at least for 6 months, then talk again. Next Stress-Echo scheduled for Dec. 1, to keep tabs on my valve.
My torn Achilles had recovered almost completely since December -- WITHOUT surgery, using a new-fangled non-op protocol that I recommend to anybody you know who's torn an AT! -- and I was thinking of trying out Beach Volleyball again.
Well, it would be a SLIGHTLY better story if I felt my first symptoms on my way out of his office, walking back to the car. . . but it was really a couple of days later!!:eek2::cool2:
I started feeling some abnormal heart racing, and some shortness of breath while walking on the level(!) -- this was definitely NOT normal. No volleyball for me, at least not with this valve. So I phoned the Cardio and the Surgeon. Cardio scheduled an Angio for today (Monday), Surgeon saw me last Wednesday and scheduled OHS for Dec. 1.
So I'm definitely in "the waiting room"!
Angiogram today killed the day and much of the evening -- Lots of "hurry up and wait", short procedure, then 10-lb sandbag for 3.5 hours. No Angio-seal at Toronto Gen'l Hospital unless you've got unusual problems. But the staff was very nice, and watching the big screens during the procedure was kind of fun. No pain except for a couple of Ow-y needles (IV & local anaesthetic).
They did leave me without food or drink for hours, until the Angio was through. And I'm restricted now for up to a week -- no sports, no bicycling, no lifting >10 lbs, no hot baths, etc. Still a walk in the park compared to. . . say. . . OHS!:wink2:
They did both sides (1 artery and 1 vein, NOT cross-valve). Toward the end, they dumped a load of contrast medium at once, to show the root of my Aorta. Hot flushes bouncing around my body, as they predicted(!). (It's also dilated, as we already knew.)
My coronary arteries seem to be "clean as a whistle", which I think was the main value-added finding from the Angio. I got a bunch of other numbers, most of which mean nothing to me. One must have been weird, because the Doc wrote "(confirmed)" after it: "PCW = 6". I don't think it added anything to the uncertainty about what's going to become of my MITRAL valve.
Early on, the Surgeon told me that he thought my MV would recover on its own after the AV was replaced. But last week, he indicated that it was a choice between repair and replacement. I didn't push him on it, and I don't know if the readings have changed since, or what.
I did ask my Surgeon why he prefers pig valves to bovine, when the best data (which I found here) seems to indicate that the bovine valves last maybe 5 years longer. He said that they had done their own analysis (maybe published), which found the opposite. He told his assistant to e-mail it to me. She got my e-dress, but I haven't seen the study yet. I'm generally happy to go with Evidence Based Medicine, though I'm not keen to push my Surgeon out of his comfort zone!
Just wanted to check in, and thank you all for setting up, and contributing to, a great resource for people like me with tons of questions and worries and such.
BTW, I've been spending WAY too much time on another medical forum, www.achillesblog.com , where I'm also "normofthenorth". I'm counting on this OHS/AVR, and this forum, to help me break my addiction to that website!!
Another crossover between the Achilles and the BAVR: After I began walking again after the AT Rupture, I re-trained myself to ALWAYS hang onto the banister when walking on stairs, and ALWAYS use my arms when getting into (or out of) chairs or bed, etc., etc. NOW, I've read here that I should re-train myself to NEVER do those things, when my sternum is being held together with SS wires! EITHER I'll find it unusually EASY to make that adjustment, because I've already recently "changed that channel" -- OR I'll find it unusually HARD, because it's exactly the opposite of what I've just gotten used to! Not sure which yet.
Meanwhile, I was a super-active 60-something athlete. Lots of bicycling around town, always took stairs 2-at-a-time on the run, and played competitive beach and court volleyball (usually with fewer than 6 per team) with a bunch of 30-somethings.
If you'd asked me 10 years ago to name the part of my body I worried about the LEAST, I might have mentioned my heart!
So, even with the stenosis and regurg numbers gradually "going south", my Cardiologist didn't have much hope of convincing me to go for OHS while I was still having so much fun beating up my body. He did introduce me to a Cardiac Surgeon, and I'd met with him twice. He was also content to have me wait to develop symptoms.
[Here's a little video clip from my mental scrapbook, extreme yet typical: Two or three years ago, 3 beach-volleyball buddies of mine (all in their 20s or 30s) and I rented an indoor volleyball court for a Saturday afternoon, at a place where we'd never played before. They had 5 courts, and we expected to bump into some players we knew, or at least that we wanted to play some 4-on-4 ball with or against. But no! There was only one other court in use, and the players on it were nowhere near our "speed".
So instead of playing 4-on-4, we split into two teams and started playing 2-on-2. We swapped the players around until we made two teams that were well balanced. We played and we played, hard, with no more timeouts than to have a drink of water and sometimes a granola bar between games.
We were all playing on the edge of exhaustion. Two-on-two beach volleyball is a very brutal game for anybody! After about 2.5 hours (pout of 3 hrs total), my (37-year-old) teammate and I were on a bit of a streak, with me serving. The ball came back to my teammate, who mis-played it -- he totally "pooched" it. While huffing and puffing violently, he came out with an apology: "I'm sorry, Norm, but I just needed 5 more minutes to catch my breath before you served!" That tickled me so much, I expect to remember it for the rest of my life!
]Around 3 weeks ago, I had an experience that was remarkably ironic: Based on the gradual decline of my BAVR, I'd started assuming that I'd have it replaced sometime this month (Nov.). But by mid-Oct., I was still asymptomatic and feeling fine, so I wasn't so sure any more.
Cardiologist's appointment, to have an Echo and discuss the Stress Echo I'd done a few months earlier. I'd lasted maybe 8:45 before hitting my target pulse rate, no problems with any of the readings except the gradual decline of the BAVR. It wasn't quite as good as the one I did 6 months earlier (maybe 9:15 or so), but in-between I'd torn my left Achilles tendon (my SECOND!) and gotten completely out of shape, so it was pretty good. Cardio agrees that we can postpone the OHS, at least for 6 months, then talk again. Next Stress-Echo scheduled for Dec. 1, to keep tabs on my valve.
My torn Achilles had recovered almost completely since December -- WITHOUT surgery, using a new-fangled non-op protocol that I recommend to anybody you know who's torn an AT! -- and I was thinking of trying out Beach Volleyball again.
Well, it would be a SLIGHTLY better story if I felt my first symptoms on my way out of his office, walking back to the car. . . but it was really a couple of days later!!
:eek2::cool2:I started feeling some abnormal heart racing, and some shortness of breath while walking on the level(!) -- this was definitely NOT normal. No volleyball for me, at least not with this valve. So I phoned the Cardio and the Surgeon. Cardio scheduled an Angio for today (Monday), Surgeon saw me last Wednesday and scheduled OHS for Dec. 1.
So I'm definitely in "the waiting room"!
Angiogram today killed the day and much of the evening -- Lots of "hurry up and wait", short procedure, then 10-lb sandbag for 3.5 hours. No Angio-seal at Toronto Gen'l Hospital unless you've got unusual problems. But the staff was very nice, and watching the big screens during the procedure was kind of fun. No pain except for a couple of Ow-y needles (IV & local anaesthetic).
They did leave me without food or drink for hours, until the Angio was through. And I'm restricted now for up to a week -- no sports, no bicycling, no lifting >10 lbs, no hot baths, etc. Still a walk in the park compared to. . . say. . . OHS!:wink2:
They did both sides (1 artery and 1 vein, NOT cross-valve). Toward the end, they dumped a load of contrast medium at once, to show the root of my Aorta. Hot flushes bouncing around my body, as they predicted(!). (It's also dilated, as we already knew.)
My coronary arteries seem to be "clean as a whistle", which I think was the main value-added finding from the Angio. I got a bunch of other numbers, most of which mean nothing to me. One must have been weird, because the Doc wrote "(confirmed)" after it: "PCW = 6". I don't think it added anything to the uncertainty about what's going to become of my MITRAL valve.
Early on, the Surgeon told me that he thought my MV would recover on its own after the AV was replaced. But last week, he indicated that it was a choice between repair and replacement. I didn't push him on it, and I don't know if the readings have changed since, or what.
I did ask my Surgeon why he prefers pig valves to bovine, when the best data (which I found here) seems to indicate that the bovine valves last maybe 5 years longer. He said that they had done their own analysis (maybe published), which found the opposite. He told his assistant to e-mail it to me. She got my e-dress, but I haven't seen the study yet. I'm generally happy to go with Evidence Based Medicine, though I'm not keen to push my Surgeon out of his comfort zone!
Just wanted to check in, and thank you all for setting up, and contributing to, a great resource for people like me with tons of questions and worries and such.
BTW, I've been spending WAY too much time on another medical forum, www.achillesblog.com , where I'm also "normofthenorth". I'm counting on this OHS/AVR, and this forum, to help me break my addiction to that website!!
Another crossover between the Achilles and the BAVR: After I began walking again after the AT Rupture, I re-trained myself to ALWAYS hang onto the banister when walking on stairs, and ALWAYS use my arms when getting into (or out of) chairs or bed, etc., etc. NOW, I've read here that I should re-train myself to NEVER do those things, when my sternum is being held together with SS wires! EITHER I'll find it unusually EASY to make that adjustment, because I've already recently "changed that channel" -- OR I'll find it unusually HARD, because it's exactly the opposite of what I've just gotten used to! Not sure which yet.
