About Me (In My Own Words)
I am a 57 year old attorney who has been actively engaged in many sports my whole life In high school I played 3 sports, football, wrestling and La crosse. I wrestled 4 years in College. I ran and mountain biked all the time, surfed rock climb, liked to ski and never had a problem or was told there was a problem with my heart. I have been golfing and scuba diving regularly the last 35 years and about 10 years ago took up trail running in the mountains. I weight train at Golds for the last 20 years . about 15 years ago i switched to snowboarding and i love that. I also took up a very difficult style of martial art 7 years ago.
about 4 years ago I noticed i was running out of gas during strenuous activity and had never had that happen. I went to my family dr who gave me an inhaler. about 10 months later i was feeling rotten and got convinced to go to the er. they did an echo which discovered for the first time,my bicuspid valve. they also told me 5 had a heart murmur. I was also having irregular rapid heartbeats not associated with exercise. the cardiologist I saw had no suggestions or treatment recommendations.
In June 2011 I finally saw a cardiologist who did the echo himself and he showed my the severe leakage in my aortic valve. From that point I was happy and sad. Happy I knew what the problem but sad it took so long and that I was totally mismanaged. I found this site and was amazed what a wealth of information I had available, if only someone had used the correct terms for my problem. Aortic Insufficiency. That was my problem With the right information you can make correct life altering decisions.
Be vigilant and be an advocate for yourself. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE
Jeff
More Info About Me & My Heart
More About Me
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I am from:
Los Angeles, California
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My surgery was:
Aortic Valve Replacement