{"id":16991,"date":"2013-05-31T14:24:15","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T19:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=16991"},"modified":"2019-09-23T11:26:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T16:26:37","slug":"teresa-lomonaco-recovery-update-jeffrey-swanson-md","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2013\/05\/31\/teresa-lomonaco-recovery-update-jeffrey-swanson-md\/","title":{"rendered":"Theresa Reaches Another Milestone In Her Recovery From Aortic Valve Replacement Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As you might remember, Theresa LoMonaco shared\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2012\/07\/27\/theresa-lomanco-patient-jeffrey-swanson-md\/\">a recovery update<\/a> with us last July. Well, it&#8217;s ten months later, and Theresa has good news to share. Here is what she writes to me:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/..\/Images\/teresa-lomonaco-patient-valve-1.jpg\" alt=\"Teresa Lomonaco - Heart Valve Surgery Success Story\" width=\"250\" height=\"336\" \/><br \/>\nTheresa LoMonaco &#8211; Aortic Valve Replacement Patient<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Adam, I wanted to share this photo of me, wearing my red survivor&#8217;s hat, that was taken at the American Heart Association 2013 Heart-Stroke Walk in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, May 18, 2013.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This event was a great culmination to the last ten months of recovery from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/aortic-valve-replacement-surgery.php\">my aortic valve replacement surgery<\/a> in July, 2012.\u00a0\u00a0 I had my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/bicuspid-aortic-valve-symptoms.php\">bicuspid aortic valve<\/a>, which was in a severe stage of aortic stenosis, replaced with a bovine tissue valve by my wonderful surgeon, Doctor Jeffrey Swanson of Providence Valve Center at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/profileImages\/111.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"111\" height=\"156\" \/><br \/>\nDr. Jeffrey Swanson &#8211; Theresa&#8217;s Heart Surgeon<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>My husband Norm, who was my caregiver and cheerleader after heart valve surgery, walked with me in the event, along with my co-workers.\u00a0 Our team was named &#8220;We Heart You.&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0 We raised a lot of money for the American Heart Association &#8212; my company helped sponsor the event, and we had a lot of fun exercising with kids, babies, and dogs in tow.\u00a0\u00a0 We walked along the Willamette River and crossed over two bridges.<\/p>\n<p>I am feeling really well since completing a cardiac rehab program in December, 2012. I work out every day &#8212; either at the gym or on a track near my home.\u00a0 I was active before the surgery and I&#8217;m even more active now.\u00a0 I&#8217;m finding walking up steps and hills a lot easier and I don&#8217;t have palpitations anymore.\u00a0\u00a0 I&#8217;m so glad that I did <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2010\/12\/03\/cardiac-rehabilitation-program-interview-ram-dandillaya\/\">cardiac rehab<\/a>, as it helped keep me positive as well as rebuild my strength.\u00a0 I had no idea how weak I would be after the surgery. I loved every minute of rehab.\u00a0 I stole time from work to do it, but it kept the blues at bay.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for all of the information and support that your blog has provided through this experience, Adam.<\/p>\n<p>It would have been so much harder and I wouldn&#8217;t have been such an informed patient had I not started reading your blog.<\/p>\n<p>Keep tickin!<\/p>\n<p>Theresa LoMonaco<br \/>\nAortic Valve Replacement<br \/>\nPortland, Oregon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-patient-stories"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}