Michael's Profile

My husband (41 years old) and I discovered the heart valve surgery website about 6 weeks ago while he was in the hospital after a car accident caused by his blacking out. Although we are still not clear what caused the black out what was discovered is that he has a bicuspid aortic valve that is experiencing leakage. He ended up being diagnosed at the same time with having a slight infection in his heart, which was aggressively treated with antibiotics. We have spent the six weeks since that time researching different surgical options (how we came across the website and downloaded Adam's book), we have met with different surgeons as well. Because of Adam's positive experience with the Ross Procedure that he wrote about, we queried that option with each of the surgeons we met with, who all steered us away from that choice. Instead my husband has decided to take the path of using a surgeon that will perform minimally invasive surgery to replace his aortic valve with a pigs valve. This has been a hard 6 weeks and surgery will be performed tomorrow morning at about 8:30am. As the caregiver (and spouse!) I have found this process incredibly challenging as there are so many different points of view and options. We are very lucky to have choices and at the same time challenged by having so many.... As we have approached the surgery day tomorrow, we have spent the past few weeks doing some incrdible hikes and enjoying our lovely home and friends. We have found it helpful to be surrounded by both quiet idleness as well as lots of energy with friends around. We know that we have a lot in front of us as we go through this process but feel as prepared as we both can be.