About Me (In My Own Words)
Hello, My name is George. At the age of one years old I was diagnosed with a heart murmur and then later on aortic stenosis and coarctation of the Aorta. At 4 years old, I had repairs done to the coarc.
I remember during my teenage years, seeing my cardiologist at the time, him telling me that I may require surgery in my mid 40's and definitely by my 50's. Being a kid, you say, "OK" and move on and go on playing basketball, football, running, whatever I did at the time and did not have any problems.
Fast forward 40 years from the time I had my initial surgery at 4.
I started running late 2012 wanting to get into shape and build up my cardio. Things that I did when I was in my teens, some in the my 20's and to some extent early 30's. I also wanted to get into races, like the Spartan Race, Tough Mudder, etc. As I was following "Couch to 5k" routines, I kept on hitting a wall. Basically, really short of breath and my chest hurt. I thought to myself, wow, I'm really out of shape. I didn't think I was this out of shape. So I pushed myself to get beyond that. Same results, just couldn't get past 3-5 minutes of running...short of breath and chest hurt. I did this for 3 months and I couldn't get beyond running for longer than 5-7 minutes. So, I quit. Went to other means an elliptical and some biking. That I didn't really have much of a problem, unless I exerted myself, that's when shortness of breath and chest pain occurred. Again, I just attributed that to pushing my limits.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2013, I'm playing basketball with my son and wound up having chest pains and nearly passing out. We were in Colorado, so I attributed this to the altitude and I ignored it. During Christmas break I went on a run, yes, I tried it again, in Chicago, and I experienced the same thing. Now I can't blame the altitude. I called my doctor the next day and he became concerned.
I had an echo done to see that my aortic valve was severely stenotic and I have an ascending aortic aneurysm as well.
More Info About Me & My Heart
More About Me
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I am from:
Chicago, Illinois