![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/brian.jpg\")
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Recently, I received an interesting email from Brian, which emulates the twists-and-turns of heart surgery. I thought you might like to hear Brian’s story. So, with his approval, I have posted his thoughts below.<\/p>\n
Hi Adam,<\/p>\n
I found your website five weeks after my heart surgery. And, I recently read your book to help me through the recovery. We have a bit in common it seems:<\/p>\n
My name is Brian and I in Orange County, California (not far from you in Los Angeles). I am 43 years old and even though I felt great, I decided to have a full physical on April 22, 2008.<\/p>\n
Everything checked out fine… except for one thing.<\/p>\n
An angiogram<\/a> revealed a very rare congenital defect that was life threatening! I was diagnosed with an “anomolous origin of a left coronary artery” that had a 90 degree takeoff from my right coronary artery and then coursed dangerously between my aorta and pulmonary artery.<\/p>\n I was lucky though. I had no narrowing of the arteries or blockages. I consulted with two surgeons – Dr. Aidan Raney (Hoag Hospital<\/a>) and with your surgeon, Dr. Vaughn Starnes (USC). They both agreed that I had outlived my luck!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dr. Starnes’ schedule was quite busy. Since Dr. Raney is well respected in Orange County, so I opted to stay closer to home with friends and family.<\/p>\n Two hours into the operation, Doctor Raney discovered that my aortic valve had separated tissue near the wall of the aorta. According to Dr. Raney, he nearly opted for a heart valve replacement but concluded that reinforcing stitches would be sufficient to remedy the situation.<\/p>\n Furthermore, it was discovered that my coronary artery could not be removed (due to its proximity to the valve). so Dr. Raney opted for a very small 1\/4″ bypass as a “Plan B”.<\/p>\n I have to say that my open heart surgery scar and ICU pictures looked identical to yours. That made me feel better. Thanks.<\/p>\n It’s interesting, the surgery seemed a breeze compared to the downer of recovery. During the last five weeks, I’ve had scary heart palpitations<\/a> and a sudden ventricular tachycardia that landed me a visit in the ER for a night. I have also experienced cardiac depression<\/a> worrying about how long my valve repair and small vein graft bypasses will last given my young age. I am thinking you went through the same thoughts. I have also been wondering if I will ever surf or scuba dive again without the fear of heart palps or weird sensations.<\/p>\n In my opinion, the recovery from heart surgery is way worse than the surgery.<\/p>\n Like you, I dumped my pain killers. I suspected the drugs were adding to my heart palpitations early on. Staying away from the medicine was tough as the chest pain kept me awake ALL NIGHT! Now I just need to deal with the whole mental aspect of worrying about a surgical repair and stop reading so many internet stats about how long valves and vein grafts last!<\/p>\n Thanks again for your help, your inspiration and your book about heart valve surgery!<\/p>\n Brian<\/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":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-surgeons-clinics"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","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=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33787,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions\/33787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/aidan-raney.jpg\")
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