Patient Story of Cathy Moseley

My Story

About Me (In My Own Words)

I had rheumatic fever at 10 which resulted in aortic and mitral valve damage. I saw a cardiologist ongoing for years. I had two children who are now adults. In 1993 at age 43 I had an aortic valve replacement and have been on coumadin. My life has been night and day different since I woke up from surgery. I do weight/resistance classes twice a week, spin/bicycle twice weekly, piloxy which is like low impact kickball & pilate once a week and yoga once a week. Although my mitral valve was leaking they opted to only replace my aortic valve at the time. I've continued to see my cardiologist annually and four years ago he said the leak had progressed enough to recommend surgery. I was asymptomatic. I didn't think I needed it yet and he said to do the mvo2 test to see what it said. I did quite well on it so he agreed that I could wait but the minute anything changed I'd probably be referred on for surgery. Over this past year I did start noticing subtle changes while at the extremes of my exercise classes. I think there were 4 times I could recall something 'different'. I almost didn't mention it but I did mention it to my internist. I was scheduled to see the cardiologist within the month and during that time I started really focusing on how I felt. I did notice things a little more...I must have been in a pretty good denial. Anyway, I relayed all of this to the cardiologist and he had me do further testing. His conclusion was that the mitral valve disease had progressed to cause mild pulmonary hypertension, so he referred me to the valve clinic. I'm set to go there Jan 14, 2016. They say that when you undergo a second surgery you're usually not as stressed as the first one. At the moment my greatest concern is with my 15 1/2 year old dog who is failing and will need to be put down soon. I talked with the vet today to figure things out, but I'm just not ready to let go right now, but I know i'll need to before the surgery. That's the hard part. I want to be mentally and physically in good shape heading into a surgery but I know this is something I'm going to have to figure out.