Kristen's Profile

I'm 36 years old, very active, a mom to two kiddos and a fiance to my partner of 7 years. We live in one of the most beautiful places in the county (in my opinion) and spend most of our summers hiking, camping, boating, fishing, and anything else outdoors. I was recently diagnoses with moderate aortic stenosis, on the border of severe. I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve but would never have known it was present. A few months ago I had a trans ischemic attack (TIA) in which I sincerely thought I was having a full blown stroke. My 12-year-old daughter was sitting next to me in the car when I was driving and felt the entire right side of my body go numb. She said "mama, your skin on your face is hanging." I looked in the mirror and the right side of my face was droopy. I tried to speak and I couldn't form sentences. It was the scariest moment of my life, so far. Following the TIA I had a couple of tests done to try and figure out what caused this. This was during the height of the COVID shutdowns, so the process was delayed a bit. I have been feeling increasingly tired and started having chest tightening upon exertion and more recently, feeling like I was going to faint when working out. I had an echo done last month (September 2020) and was informed I have aortic stenosis and was set up to meet with a cardiologist about 6 weeks after the test was performed. Just last week I went to the ER because my chest pains were bad. My heart rate and BP were high, ECG showed "something going on, on the left side", yet I was told by the on-call cardiologist that my symptoms were likely not from aortic stenosis since my AVA is around 1cm^2 and my mean gradient is only 24mmHg. I'm now waiting on my cardiology appointment and then i have an appointment scheduled at Cleveland Clinic in a few weeks as well to get another opinion. :)