About Me (In My Own Words)
I was not diagnosed with rheumatic fever as a little girl. My parents didn’t realize just how sick I was. As a result of that, I had an infection in my lungs that spread to my mitral valve and messed it up pretty bad. I thought that I had asthma because my parents smoked cigarettes all my life when I would go run and be breathless, and never really felt the full effects of the valve being defective from mutated I guess. Other than me being sicker than most children would be sick and it would last longer for me and my breathing would be pretty bad. I just thought I just got a little sicker than the other children well on into my adulthood and becoming a mother my first pregnancy was twins, and that one was rough enough. I became preeclamptic and it was really hard on me and I felt like I was more tired than I should be after I had twins in a way that no matter how much sleep I got or what I did it was never enough like I could never catch up or feel rested at all when I was always emotional and just really quick to go off because my anxiety was really high and I had the twins in January 2013, and then I had my baby baby in August 2016. It was at that time during that pregnancy that the hospital the discovered I had a heart problem didn’t tell me anything and knew that I was having a lot of breathing problems. I literally could walk a few steps and be out of breath like I’ve ran a mile and it was beginning to affect my baby along with the diabetes that I had gestational so they had to take him a little bit early. I couldn’t possibly go any further and after I had him, thankfully he was in good condition other than his Apgar scores were terrible. I remember being at home and having the baby and coughing up a big handful of blood. I just couldn’t catch my breath and it came out and so I called the doctor and got in with the doctor. In the midst of talking with the receptionist that passed out and they called my family back and my family came in and found me laid over with the baby blood coming out of my mouth. I guess I’ve been coughing it up, but they thought I had a pulmonary embolism essentially and the next day they did a scan which revealed that my heart was terribly enlarged and my micro valve look like a broken windshield that was almost ripped off. My ejection fraction was at 27. They told me to go home and sit down and don’t do anything and I’m a single mother so you can imagine how comical that was for me, but I stayed in medicine management with my congestive heart failure which they diagnosed me with at that point for all the way up until my open heart in September 2023 overtime my echocardiograms began to decline in the medicine no longer could fix the issue to help me off and at first they thought that they could have a balloon fall in and stretch out my valve and buy me some more time, but when they went in with the camera down my throat at that time, that’s when they realize my heart was way worse than what they could’ve ever really expected and that had something had to be done, but I really was near my deathbed. The surgeon told me I had two weeks that best probably since I’ve had the open-heart surgery where they put a metal prosthetic valve pen and did angioplasty in my tricuspid valve I have continued to take a blood thinners, which I am completely resistant to my INR levels refused to become therapeutic. I go to the cancer center once a week lapse for them to try and get it therapeutic and it’s never really stayed in a good range. It’s just a battle that I’ve been up against and I also have been having patients that the cardiologist I see is saying is like a block in my heart like a Avb one block. In her description it’s like a misfire in my heart. Something’s off with my rhythm. I’ve recently wore the monitor again for a month so they could watch my heart and I had one really bad episode where my heart raced up extremely extremely high tachycardia is a bare minimum word in that BPM and it instantly dropped from racing high to like 60 something so for now we are trying some entresto because the valve they put in is causing the bottom of my heart to harden as well as doubling my blood pressure medication and keeping me on a high milligram dosage of the warfarin to try and keep my INR somewhat at least elevated and I will go from there next time I have an update
More Info About Me & My Heart
More About Me
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I am from:
Russellville, AR
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My surgery date is:
September 6, 2023
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I was diagnosed with:
Mitral Regurgitation
Mitral Stenosis
Tricuspid Regurgitation
Tricuspid Stenosis
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My surgery was:
Mitral Valve Replacement
Mitral Valve Repair
Tricuspid Valve Replacement
Tricuspid Valve Repair
Transcatheter Mitral Valve Repair
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My surgeon is:
Dr. Frederick Meadors
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My hospital is:
CHI ST VINCENT INFIRMARY Little Rock Ar.
