Hello Again Fellow Zipper Club Members
Hi Ed: Congrads on the 2yr. Mine is next month. Somehow it doesnt seem that long ago. Im taking both meds and supplements. I have good days and bad. Like Ann I have problems with left shoulder, chest pain left breast. I think its more being a woman...But Im alive and kickin and fighting the best I can. Stannis
That's a big problem on sharing experiences on this group. We have all had (or expect to have) the experience of heart surgery, yet our conditions and reactions vary all over the place. In my own case, I knew for several years that I had a bad valve (stenosis) that was gradually getting worse, but my weight was low, my cholesterol was low, I didn't smoke, and I exercised regularly. Then I reached a point where the valve started to deteriorate faster than would be predicted from just increasing age. That's when they did an angiogram that showed a 90% blockage in a key artery. Since I had none of the ordinary symptoms of that sort of problem, it came as a big shock. The cardiologist advised me to get a bypass as soon as possible and have a valve replacement at the same time. I went to another cardiologist for a second opinion. He looked over the angiogram results and said that the blockage wasn't really too bad, since I have large veins. He had hope that a newly developed, long life stent could do the job. Then he did an echocardiogram, but combined it with a stress test, which the first cardiologist had been reluctant to do. Shortly after six minutes on the treadmill, I could see by the expression on his face that I had failed the test. He stopped the test right then and there and told me that my blood pressure had suddenly dropped from about 140 to about 115. I would probably have passed out if he hadn't stopped the test. I had been watching the pulse readout and it had just gotten up to about 120 beats per minute, about 85% of my max at that time (I was 78). The problem was that the calcified valve flaps were just too stiff to keep up with the faster beat. With that information about the valve, the second cardiologist agreed that an operation was the only way to go, but because of the valve rather than the artery, though naturally both should be done at the same time. Also, he didn't indicate that it was such an immediate crisis, but that I shouldn't wait more than a few months. There was some question about whether it would require more than one bypass. I found out later that the surgeon is in the best position to make this decision, since he can examine the arteries directly and decide how many bypasses are needed. He can feel how hard the arteries are and, from that, how bad the blockages are. The end result was a new mosaic porcine tissue valve and a 3x bypass (one mammarial artery and two sections of vein from the left leg). It will be two years by the end of July and I am back in far better condition than I was in the year or so before the operation. There is no problem in letting my pulse get up to max, which is 140 this year. I have done considerable hiking in the local mountains and have had no problems at altitudes up to 12,000 ft. regards, Bob S. On May 17, 2005, at 6:34 AM, Ann Ray wrote: Then I have a friend whose cholesterol was 140 and his hdl was 69 and he had a stroke. He was not taking aspirin and did not have any known heart disease and did not smoke so then I just had to wonder about all of it. The only thing that might have made a difference with my friend is he did not exercise regularly and did eat what he wanted as he was not overweight either. We are all so very different and new things are being discovered everyday. Ann