About Me (In My Own Words)
I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve; but, it was not discovered until I was 29 years old. And then it was stated to be just a heart murmur. Fast forward to 4 years ago, after a reaction to some steroids, I saw a cardiologist after my heart began to skip about every 4th beat. During this process, I had a mild stroke in my eye from debris shaken loose from the irregular heart beats. This vision cleared up in a few months but the cardiologist did a a series of tests that led us to believe there was a possible blocked artery because of the way the heart did not show the blood flow from a contrast stress test. This led to a heart cath that found the arteries were all wide open with only a couple of places with about 5 to 10% build up. Basically the heart of a 16 year old, sort of. The odd contrast was from the heart flexing in a different way due to the bicuspid valve configuration.
Since the heart arrhythmia was likely caused by over dosage of steroids for the terrible poison ivy I had a few weeks before, he put me on Bystolic and after about 3-4 weeks, everything was back to normal.
Except that normal was explanined to me that I had a biscupid aortic valve that I was born with and at some day, it would need to be replaced.
I thought no problem, when I am 65 it would be a long time before I needed it from the 53 year old perspective.
Over the last year and a half, my cardiologist has gone from quiet counsel to putting his foot down to get me to pay attention to the numbers and my body which I push to go continuously. I was starting to show some symptoms and once he convinced me to stop exercising, it has been a significant increase in the symptoms. Thus the next phase of this journey begins.
More Info About Me & My Heart
More About Me
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I am from:
Fishers, Indiana
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My surgery date is:
August 28, 2013
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I was diagnosed with:
Aortic Stenosis
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My surgery was:
Aortic Valve Replacement
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My hospital is:
St. Vincent Heart Hospital - Carmel IN
