About Me (In My Own Words)
Hello, I am joining the community on behalf of my dear mother. She is 82 years old and does not have Internet and lives about 40 miles away from me with my stepdad. I have been on this site reading the many journal entries and printing them and mailing them to her because they are amazing! And so, so helpful! I am so thankful to have found this site!!! Mom was diagnosed probably 30-40 years ago with a "floppy" mitral valve that was monitored on a less than ideal schedule (in other words the ball got dropped and monitoring was not continued on a regular basis) and then this past Spring she started experiencing severe shortness of breath especially while lying down, and fatigue. After several inaccurate diagnoses, finally it was found her mitral valve has an "impressive" leak, her left atrium is quite enlarged, and she is starting to have congestive heart failure. She's had a echocardiogram and a TEE and a phone appointment with a cardiothoracic surgeon and is looking at mitral valve repair/replacement in late December. The other valves and the rest of the heart and the ejection fraction are all pretty normal, especially for her age.
We live in a very rural area of central/eastern WA state with limited access to high quality healthcare and will be traveling over the Cascade moutain passes to Seattle for additional appointments and valve surgery with Dr. Eric Lehr at Swedish Hospital. In December this will be less than ideal and causes her a lot of anxiety, on top of the anxiety of the whole diagnosis and upcoming surgery. To be honest, she is completely terrified. (and so am I!) She is in excellent health otherwise, thin, fit, eats right, exercises, (she has a horse and though she doesn't ride anymore, she is outside all the time moving hay around, picking up poop, pulling weeds, etc---she's amazing) no smoking/drinking, has no co-morbidities, and hasn't been in the hospital since she had me 50+ years ago. She's naturally an anxious person anyway and this situation makes it so much worse. She saw her primary care provider Monday and on my advice asked about antianxiety medications such as lorazepam (Ativan) or something similar but the doctor was very adamant that she NOT take anything "so as not to mess with the meds she is already taking." All she is taking is Lasix, potassium, and some sort of blood pressure pill, I think it's Losartin but I'm not positive. Does anyone have experience with this and any advice to offer? It seems to me that the extreme anxiety and stress she is under will surely be harmful to her health and her heart as well, and a "little something" to calm her down would seem beneficial. Surely she is not the only heart surgery patient with extreme anxiety? What have others' doctors recommended? Thank you for any advice and thank you again for this wonderful site! I don't know how Mom and I would cope without you all! :) :)
More Info About Me & My Heart
More About Me
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I am from:
Yakima, WA
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My surgery date is:
December 30, 2021
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I was diagnosed with:
Mitral Regurgitation
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My surgery was:
Mitral Valve Repair
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My surgeon is:
Dr. Eric Lehr
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