L
lvbush
I'm a 66 year old female scheduled for AVR and TVR on September 20, 2001 at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC. Any words of advice for this old lady? I'm scared to death.
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P
Peter Easton
Have no fear
Have no fear
Lilian --
Good to have you in the fold! No need to fear -- this is a really practiced routine for most heart surgeons and there is a ton of experience out there, both in medical circles and reflected in various threads on this site.
I'm a 55 year old male who had AVR a week ago today and got home Sunday. Went very well. I have a sister (seven years older than I) who has gone through two of them ten years apart, and a 92-year old mother who had her only successful one six years ago.
I won't say it's a simple trip to the grocery store, but there is much support to be had for the journey and it is entirely negotiable. Probably your best first resource is to nose around among old threads on these forums.
Welcome!
Peter
Have no fear
Lilian --
Good to have you in the fold! No need to fear -- this is a really practiced routine for most heart surgeons and there is a ton of experience out there, both in medical circles and reflected in various threads on this site.
I'm a 55 year old male who had AVR a week ago today and got home Sunday. Went very well. I have a sister (seven years older than I) who has gone through two of them ten years apart, and a 92-year old mother who had her only successful one six years ago.
I won't say it's a simple trip to the grocery store, but there is much support to be had for the journey and it is entirely negotiable. Probably your best first resource is to nose around among old threads on these forums.
Welcome!
Peter
Nancy
Well-known member
Hi Lillian, welcome
Hi Lillian, welcome
Welcome to this wonderful site. You'll get so much support here and you have a great group of new friends. They all understand what you're going through.
My husband Joe has had three heart valve surgeries. He also has a pacemaker and has had two lung surgeries. They should have installed velcro in his chest. He's the victim of having had rheumatic fever as a teenager. He's 70 yrs. old, and just had his last surgery for a repair on his mitral valve on July 18.
Think of your surgery as a lifesaving procedure. It is also a procedure which will greatly improve your quality of life. Sure, it's tough and there's some pain, but it will give you the opportunity to enjoy the wonderful things that life has in store for you.
The surgeons who do this are a dedicated group and they do it over and over every day. Their expertise is daunting. You'll be in fine hands, I'm sure.
Stay with us we'll help you through.
Hi Lillian, welcome
Welcome to this wonderful site. You'll get so much support here and you have a great group of new friends. They all understand what you're going through.
My husband Joe has had three heart valve surgeries. He also has a pacemaker and has had two lung surgeries. They should have installed velcro in his chest. He's the victim of having had rheumatic fever as a teenager. He's 70 yrs. old, and just had his last surgery for a repair on his mitral valve on July 18.
Think of your surgery as a lifesaving procedure. It is also a procedure which will greatly improve your quality of life. Sure, it's tough and there's some pain, but it will give you the opportunity to enjoy the wonderful things that life has in store for you.
The surgeons who do this are a dedicated group and they do it over and over every day. Their expertise is daunting. You'll be in fine hands, I'm sure.
Stay with us we'll help you through.
maxximom
Well-known member
WELCOME
WELCOME
Welcome Lillian..you are in the right place here for infomation and companioship. I am a fairly new member and have found everyone here to be just wonderful. You are still young
I was just 70 in Feb. and found out about a month ago that I needed a AVR and a triple bypass..I certainly know the feeling of being scared..so does everyone else here! I am sceduled for my surgery Sept 21 at Duke..but I may possibly go to Cleveland..I will make a decision tomorrow!! Its the hardest decision of my life!
Like everyone else here both of us will do fine..look how many people are pulling for us Plesae ask any questions you care to..there will always be someone to help answer.
Joan
WELCOME
Welcome Lillian..you are in the right place here for infomation and companioship. I am a fairly new member and have found everyone here to be just wonderful. You are still young
I was just 70 in Feb. and found out about a month ago that I needed a AVR and a triple bypass..I certainly know the feeling of being scared..so does everyone else here! I am sceduled for my surgery Sept 21 at Duke..but I may possibly go to Cleveland..I will make a decision tomorrow!! Its the hardest decision of my life!Like everyone else here both of us will do fine..look how many people are pulling for us
Plesae ask any questions you care to..there will always be someone to help answer.Joan
hi lillian!
everyone is right; this is such a supportive place you 've come to. really, there is a wealth of info right here at your fingertips! sit back and read through what has been written about avr and everyone's experiences.
my husband joey's surgery was just postponed from tomorrow morning to the 20th (due to today's events in nyc), so you , joan and joey will all be doing this about the same time! I will certainly be thinking of you.
ask any questions, don't be shy, there will surely be someone who's either been through it or knows about it.
have you thought about what type of valve(s) you might want to use? how are you feeling? what prompted you to go to the dr? same as everyone else? symptoms?
welcome and we hope to hear from you again,
sylvia
everyone is right; this is such a supportive place you 've come to. really, there is a wealth of info right here at your fingertips! sit back and read through what has been written about avr and everyone's experiences.
my husband joey's surgery was just postponed from tomorrow morning to the 20th (due to today's events in nyc), so you , joan and joey will all be doing this about the same time! I will certainly be thinking of you.
ask any questions, don't be shy, there will surely be someone who's either been through it or knows about it.
have you thought about what type of valve(s) you might want to use? how are you feeling? what prompted you to go to the dr? same as everyone else? symptoms?
welcome and we hope to hear from you again,
sylvia
G
Gillian (in UK)
Lillian - I had my AVR on March 13 at age 66. And it really is true - the fear and anticipation beforehand is the worst part.
What I found helped was asking lots of questions from the people here - even about the smallest details - anything that was on my mind. Getting all the answers made me feel really supported.
Wishing you all the best.
What I found helped was asking lots of questions from the people here - even about the smallest details - anything that was on my mind. Getting all the answers made me feel really supported.
Wishing you all the best.
P
Peter Easton
Further
Further
SENT THIS FURTHER PRIVATE REPLY TO LIL, THEN THOUGHT IT MIGHT CONTAIN ITEMS OF INTEREST TO OTHERS, SO DECIDED TO PASTE IT HERE AS WELL. HOPE YOU DON'T MIND, LIL!
PETER
Lil -- Thanks for the direct message. I was actually thinking of adding a note to the one that I sent you on the thread, because I realize that in my post-operative peppiness I understated my age! Am actually 59 going on 60. And, as I mentioned, my sister had a second (successful) AVR at age 65, while my Mother had hers at age 86 and is cruising along pretty well six years post-op.
Janie is right that some fear is entirely normal and probably, for that matter, adaptive. I myself, though, had very little pain when you actually come down to it. To begin with, given modern anesthesia, you are the person LEAST aware of the operation itself. You seem to go from chatting with anesthesiologist and/or nurse and spouse in pre-op to waving groggily at those smiling heads greeting you somewhere out there in post-op. It's as if 4-10 hours (according to the case) had simply dropped out of history and I felt a bit like Rip van Winkle, needing to inquire about what had happened in the universe in the meanwhile, once I came around. (Is George Washington still President?)
Then in some ways ICU is like a luxury hotel (Steve W said he didn't want to leave), with the uncomfortable portions elided by your general grogginess -- so many people are waiting on you hand and (mostly immobilized) foot. The breathing tube seems to be everyone's least favorite portion, but still quite negotiable (have a family member stationed around to make sure you get ice chips when you need or want them till it is removed!); but, in my case, they removed it before I was fully awake. Other than the operation itself, you don't tend to get long stretches of uninterrupted sleep, even supposing you were inclined to them, given the hospital 4-hour shift routine and the tendency of whole different tiers of people to come around with medicines, blood draw requests, observation sheets and you-name-it. But just go into a cat-napping mode.
At each stage of your reanimation and reinduction into the wake-a-day world, the mutiple tubes and IVs and sensors to which you are connected begin to seem more constricting and uncomfortable, but then at each stage you develop a new level of adaptation and new strategems for coping. My biggest hospital pain and only certifiable injury (other than the officially induced one to my sternum) was sustaining a sort of sprain to a muscle I didn't even know I had running somewhere between my cranium back of the right ear and my neck. It all came from trying to leverage myself up into a sitting position without forbidden pushing or pulling motions with the arms! (That soreness has since subsided.) The key thing is (a) to ask plenty of times for people to help you move and adjust the hospital bed (those things are truly wonders nowadays -- virtual living creatures that will weigh you as well as contort in multiple ways and self-adjust to weight a bit like a waterbed; and (b) to get good yourself at running that machine. The biggest problem to resolve is access to the buttons, which end up in odd and counterintuitive positions vis a vis your reach and hand given various combinations of your own position and the stationing of the side rail.
See to what interesting micro-dimensions the universe shrinks at times like these? But then, as I learned from my Mother, attention to minutiae can be a saving grace in times of major change or stress.
Let me know if you have other questions I can answer or pontificate upon! Probably FDR is still partly right -- we have little to fear but fear itself (and there isn't much point worrying about it. Heck, why not treat yourself to some fear? Stood us pretty well in evolution, I'd say.) Barring very unlikely circumstances, this valley only contains the SHADOW of death, and many rods and staffs are there to comfort us.
Peter
Further
SENT THIS FURTHER PRIVATE REPLY TO LIL, THEN THOUGHT IT MIGHT CONTAIN ITEMS OF INTEREST TO OTHERS, SO DECIDED TO PASTE IT HERE AS WELL. HOPE YOU DON'T MIND, LIL!
PETER
Lil -- Thanks for the direct message. I was actually thinking of adding a note to the one that I sent you on the thread, because I realize that in my post-operative peppiness I understated my age! Am actually 59 going on 60. And, as I mentioned, my sister had a second (successful) AVR at age 65, while my Mother had hers at age 86 and is cruising along pretty well six years post-op.
Janie is right that some fear is entirely normal and probably, for that matter, adaptive. I myself, though, had very little pain when you actually come down to it. To begin with, given modern anesthesia, you are the person LEAST aware of the operation itself. You seem to go from chatting with anesthesiologist and/or nurse and spouse in pre-op to waving groggily at those smiling heads greeting you somewhere out there in post-op. It's as if 4-10 hours (according to the case) had simply dropped out of history and I felt a bit like Rip van Winkle, needing to inquire about what had happened in the universe in the meanwhile, once I came around. (Is George Washington still President?)
Then in some ways ICU is like a luxury hotel (Steve W said he didn't want to leave), with the uncomfortable portions elided by your general grogginess -- so many people are waiting on you hand and (mostly immobilized) foot. The breathing tube seems to be everyone's least favorite portion, but still quite negotiable (have a family member stationed around to make sure you get ice chips when you need or want them till it is removed!); but, in my case, they removed it before I was fully awake. Other than the operation itself, you don't tend to get long stretches of uninterrupted sleep, even supposing you were inclined to them, given the hospital 4-hour shift routine and the tendency of whole different tiers of people to come around with medicines, blood draw requests, observation sheets and you-name-it. But just go into a cat-napping mode.
At each stage of your reanimation and reinduction into the wake-a-day world, the mutiple tubes and IVs and sensors to which you are connected begin to seem more constricting and uncomfortable, but then at each stage you develop a new level of adaptation and new strategems for coping. My biggest hospital pain and only certifiable injury (other than the officially induced one to my sternum) was sustaining a sort of sprain to a muscle I didn't even know I had running somewhere between my cranium back of the right ear and my neck. It all came from trying to leverage myself up into a sitting position without forbidden pushing or pulling motions with the arms! (That soreness has since subsided.) The key thing is (a) to ask plenty of times for people to help you move and adjust the hospital bed (those things are truly wonders nowadays -- virtual living creatures that will weigh you as well as contort in multiple ways and self-adjust to weight a bit like a waterbed; and (b) to get good yourself at running that machine. The biggest problem to resolve is access to the buttons, which end up in odd and counterintuitive positions vis a vis your reach and hand given various combinations of your own position and the stationing of the side rail.
See to what interesting micro-dimensions the universe shrinks at times like these? But then, as I learned from my Mother, attention to minutiae can be a saving grace in times of major change or stress.
Let me know if you have other questions I can answer or pontificate upon! Probably FDR is still partly right -- we have little to fear but fear itself (and there isn't much point worrying about it. Heck, why not treat yourself to some fear? Stood us pretty well in evolution, I'd say.) Barring very unlikely circumstances, this valley only contains the SHADOW of death, and many rods and staffs are there to comfort us.
Peter
L
lvbush
Encouragement
Encouragement
Thanks everyone for the words of encouragement. I'm feeling a lot bet after reading all the responses. It's great to be able to share and learn from others. I don't know what I would do if I hadn't come across this forum. My thoughts and prayers are with each and everyone one of you. I'll keep you informed as I get closer to surgery and afterwards. God bless.
Encouragement
Thanks everyone for the words of encouragement. I'm feeling a lot bet after reading all the responses. It's great to be able to share and learn from others. I don't know what I would do if I hadn't come across this forum. My thoughts and prayers are with each and everyone one of you. I'll keep you informed as I get closer to surgery and afterwards. God bless.
B
Bill Hall
Hi Lillian - I guess one thing we all have in common is that fear when we approach surgery. I think it is unavvoidable. One thing I found that helped was all the success stories and high probability of success. In recovery, I met three men above age 70 who looked really good after surgery, one was age 80. Hope for the best for you and keep a positive attitude.
J
Jean
Welcome!
Welcome!
Lilian,
I am in complete concurrence with my fellow site mates. They just left one thing out that is still (after 20 months) such a wonderful experience that I had to mention it.
If you have any symptoms you will be so amazed with how well, heck--wonderful, you feel even a few days after surgery you will agree it is all worth it.
Read our posts here and ask any question you may have...somebody has been there and can answer it.
Welcome!
Lilian,
I am in complete concurrence with my fellow site mates. They just left one thing out that is still (after 20 months) such a wonderful experience that I had to mention it.
If you have any symptoms you will be so amazed with how well, heck--wonderful, you feel even a few days after surgery you will agree it is all worth it.
Read our posts here and ask any question you may have...somebody has been there and can answer it.
