Mary's Profile

I have a congenital bicuspid valve with severe stenosis. I am 71 and just found this out in August. Certainly explains how crummy I had been feel in the last year. Starting to be symptomatic with some shortness of breath, dizziness and close to a recent blackout. Also not much energy. Previously my symptoms were severe heartburn, nausea and some left side mild chest pain, which I had a full GI work up for and nothing was found. I knew I had aortic stenosis, which I was getting checked for every year, and up until this past May was told it was moderate. I had a stress test because of the heartburn, nausea symptoms in August and then found out my stenosis was severe and I had a bicuspid valve (my mom had one and several of my 1st cousins do also) however, when I asked my cardiologist here if I had a bicuspid valve, he said he didn't know. Long story short, after having all the testing here (in Iowa) I was told I would be a good candidate for either the TAVR or OHS. They kind of threw the ball in my court to make that decision and that's when I decided to go to Mayo. They repeated most of the testing at Mayo and found a few things that would have definitely complicated a TAVR and would have likely turned into an emergency situation. I am not blaming our medical facilities or physicians here because we are not a large facility and I doubt our equipment is anywhere near as good as they have in Rochester. So my journey begins and I'm pretty nervous but do have complete faith in my new surgeon and the staff at Mayo.