Well, hold on now! Give me a moment to explain.<\/p>\n
Everyone I know will experience many obstacles in life. For me, one of those low-points was the day my cardiologist told me that my heart was dilated and I needed aortic valve replacement.<\/p>\n
\u201cYa-ya-ya-ya-ya mean, oh-oh-oh-oh-open heart sur-sur-sur-surgery?\u201d I queried my heart doctor in stuttering disbelief.<\/p>\n
In that moment, a unique fear struck me. Maybe it struck you too? Several questions pulsed through my conscious – \u201cAm I going to die?\u201d \u201cWill I surf again?\u201d \u201cHow long will I be out of work?\u201d<\/p>\n
And lastly… \u201cWhy… Oh… Why… Did I get a lemon for a heart?\u201d (Okay, maybe the thought wasn’t that dramatic.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"Heart](\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/making-lemonade.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Well… That was over twenty-two months ago. Guess what? I did not die. I am surfing again. And, my high tech consulting business is on turbo drive. Plus, I got married to wonderful woman!!!<\/p>\n
In looking back on the heart valve surgery experience, I can definitely say my life is better today than it was before surgery. Yes. The experience was physically and mentally tough on me and my family. (That recovery can be a real doozy.)<\/p>\n
But, as the cliche goes… Nothing in life of value is free or easy.<\/p>\n
That said, I wanted to know more. I wanted to know if heart valve surgery was a positive chapter in other patients’ book of life. So, earlier this year, I conducted an online survey of many former patients. I asked a very simple question to the patients, \u201cOn a scale of 1 (negative change) to 10 (positive change), how would you score the impact of heart valve surgery on your life?<\/p>\n
As you can see below, the results are amazing!!!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"Looking](\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/heart-valve-survey.gif\")
<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
Over 46% of former heart valve surgery patients scored that question with a perfect “10”. Taken one step further, over 88% of patients scored the question to positive side of the spectrum.<\/p>\n
In light of this survey, it appears that most heart valve surgery patients are turning lemon into lemonade.<\/p>\n
Keep on tickin!
\nAdam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-patient-stories"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","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=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}