When I was initially diagnosed with severe congenital aortic dilation and scheduled for near immediate surgery (3 days later), one of the first resources I found was your website.\u00a0 The information on the site really helped me get oriented to and educated about what was happening to me. It also gave me hope that full recovery is very possible.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/mark-hurst.jpg\")
\nMark Hurst – Heart Valve Replacement Patient<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prior to my surgical episode, I was already registered to ride the Michigan Make-A-Wish Foundation’s Wish-A-Mile 300 Bicycle Tour in July. We bike ride for 3 days, 100 miles per day.\u00a0 I immediately wrote-off the event after surgery during the early part of my recovery. But, a few weeks later, on a night that I couldn’t sleep, I had a “well, not so fast” moment.<\/p>\n
Long story short, through your experience, you helped me change my mindset and give the ride a try – if I could get back on a real bike by June, among other medical milestones.<\/p>\n
Last weekend was the event, and, 116 days post-op, I am happy to say I was able to complete my first 100-mile century ride on a bicycle. And then another.<\/p>\n
Thank you again for all the great information! I hope you are continuing to enjoy great health!<\/p>\n
Mark Hurst
\n(Michigan)<\/p>\n
P.S. I read your heart valve surgery book<\/a> post-surgery. Besides gaining additional insights myself, the main beneficiary may be my younger brother.\u00a0 He is 10 years younger than I am, and came up from Tennessee during my episode.\u00a0 When he went home, he scheduled an echo due to to the genetic aspects of valvular disease<\/a>, and his aorta is dilated to 4.7cm.\u00a0 He is now on Beta blockers and on a 3-month monitoring schedule. He will be more prepared to deal with this than I was (and hopefully, minimally invasive technology will be ready when he needs the surgery).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-905","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\/905","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=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}