Patient Story of Lynne Jeffreys

My Story

About Me (In My Own Words)

Diagnosed in 1999 after severe heart palpitations. My Mom passed away 12 hours after heart surgery in 1999, and that was when I got diagnosed. I had just the BAV and severe aortic stenosis but now they tell me the aorta has started to dilate.It is
about 3.4 in size. So that part was found out on Nov 28, 2014. It is still scary about having surgery. The valve is very,very bad and will need to be replaced before the aorta needs to be replaced. This means 2 surgeries in the future. They will do a mini-thoracotomy sometime in Jan or Feb 2015. I don't really want 2 surgeries at all but from my research it is too soon to do the aorta replacement. I'm not sure what to do now. To complicate the surgery I had knee surgery in 2003 and subsequently developed severe Fibromyalgia and arthritis. The doctors say the surgery caused the FM to start. It took me 4 years to get to a stable condition and now I'm even more worried about starting the FM all over again. I know there is not much I can do to stop it from happening. I have been weaning the meds down to a just barely there level so I can increase the doses if needed. I am trying to be as positive as I can but it's not easy as we all know. Even though we may have similar illnesses there are still enough different too. There have been little signs but no fainting, shortness of breath or swelling yet. I'm much more fatigued now, seen to get headaches more towards the end of the day and severe stiff neck and shoulders from the stress and worry.

I had the surgery as a mini thoracotomy august 11, 2015 and on august 30, 2016 I tore out the sutures between the ribs and developed a rare lung hernia which had to be repaired because of lung adhesions forming. Two back to back surgeries has taken a toll on the body. I'm still having muscles spasms and cramping of the pectoral muscles as well as some detachment of the muscle. This is my 8th month starting and I feel the same now as I did in Jan. There isn't much they can do but I'll contact to surgeon as it is hard to find answers for this.

Lynne