Danielle's Guestbook

Hey Danielle!

I get the impression that you were a very active and physical person prior to surgery, and worked hard to get that back after OHS.   I'm hoping I can lean on your lessons learned.

Over the last 5 years, especially being in healthcare through the pandemic, frequent and intense exercise became absolutely essential to my life physically and emotionally.  Trying to work my way back to that has been the most challenging part of my recovery, now almost 6 months post-op.  Last weekend, weeks after recovering from a pretty significant viral illness, I did a couple brief, moderate workouts, and found myself with a days of fever and misery and new diagnosis of pericarditis.  This is the second time I think this happened, and I promise you there was NOTHING to suggest I was in a danger zone before this happened.  I felt great, the workouts felt great and EASY, and I thought I could finally start building in those habits again.  

I'm not going to try anything for several months, given the normal recovery timely for pericarditis, and am struggling with the discouragement of not being able to get back to one of the most important things about daily life.  But even more I'm struggling with pessimism about even TRYING to build those habits again in the future, given how severe the cost was, when there was no indication whatsoever I was crossing any lines.  

Have you had any experiences like this?  Have you had things you had to learn the hard way?  Any resources you could point me to?

Any wisdom you have to offer would be so appreciated!!!

Hey. I'd love to connect if possible. I am BAV with severe regurgitation and will need to have surgery in the coming weeks. I am prone to depression, and read that you encountered it, so I'd love to pick your brain a bit. I've never been on antidepressents before, but I'm considering starting before surgery (but don't know how good of an idea it is as I'm sure I'll be on a lot of meds post surgery)