Michelle's Journal

Sorry I haven't posted. It has been an up and down 10 days. Surgery was delayed by about 4 hours so I did not walk into the OR until 5pm. I thought that was nice walking the halls and talking with the anesthesiologist on the way to the OR. Hospital stay was a bit up and down. ICU was fine (did not like the respirator had to keep myself calm). Chest Tubes, oh my they hurt. The heart tubes were removed before leaving ICU. The lung tubes stayed in few more days since they were draining lots of fluids. Did not realize how much back pain the tubes would cause. 😫. Wednesday night I had an AFib issue. It was a bit surreal, my alarms started to go off, nurse was in my room pretty quick, all she said was, yup this is real and ran out. Then had the head nurse back in, pretty soon lights on and they were putting meds into the IV. They were able to get it under control within a few hours. The other fun, was my INR levels. They have not been stabilized yet. The only way for me to leave the hospital is to agree to do daily INR checks. The INR levels are taking their sweet time getting into the 2-3 range that I need. I now have to do shots of Lovenox twice a day into the belly until the numbers stabilize. Everyone at the hospital was so caring. Great group of people. It is good to be home with the family. On to the recovery phase.

Met with the surgeon via video conference and the surgery has been scheduled again. June 15th is the date. Glad we are finally moving forward. Right now, no visitors allowed so will be doing this without my husband. For those who have done this alone, any advice for my husband and I?

Got the call that my surgery is postponed. They are expecting to call me within a month with a new date once they understand how COVID19 will impact the hospital system in NYC. Good luck to everyone during this time. Stay safe!

My husband and I went to see a surgeon, Hiroo Takayama, on January 31st. We had a great conversation with him and we are moving forward with the surgery and have scheduled it for April 1st. I'm a little relieved to have it scheduled and a whole bunch nervous. 🙂 While discussing the various valve options he mentioned a trial for the On-X to use Eliquis instead of Coumadin. Trial is scheduled to start this month. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/record/NCT04142658

For the folks out there with BAV, how hard did you have to push to get family members checked out? Both my sisters were checked, they both have faint murmurs, and neither of them have BAV. I have brought both my boys to be checked, they are 19 and 22. The cardiologist said since neither of them have a murmur they don't need to be checked further until they have one. Since I didn't have a murmur diagnosed until I was 50 I'm a bit concerned and both my boys want to know. Just curious if anyone else has run into this?