My Aortic Adventure

As soon as I woke up from surgery, my girlfriend Marisa excitedly informed me that my surgeon had dropped off a DVD.  On this DVD, there were 5 different short videos taken during my surgery.  Of course, I was also interested in seeing my surgery as soon as possible.   This first video is my old Aortic Valve.  The white, fleshy part seen here should be three crisp cusps that come seamlessly together to allow blood to flow in one direction and then shut to prevent regurgitation back into my Left Ventricle.  As you can see in this video, my valve is anything but "crisp" and definitely does not have a "seamless" function.  Basically, this valve was restricting the amount of blood flowing out of my heart while also allowing blood to flow in the wrong direction with each beat.  The next video is my favorite!  After removing my old Aortic Valve and Ascending Aorta, Dr. Miller then sewed on the new hardware. The white tube sewed to my hear...

On June 1st, 2016, I had to be at the hospital by 5:30am.  My surgery was set to begin at 8:00am and I was in a daze.  Everything seemed to be moving so slowly.  It's one of the times in my life that was getting recorded straight to my long-term memory, and even though the clock was moving faster than ever before, my brain was slowing everything down around so I could remember it more clearly. After getting checked in and reviewing my insurance information (a weird conversation to have the day of surgery), I walked to a pre-op room.  Here, a nurse shaved my torso while others took vitals, double checked my information, and started an IV.  After the prep work was complete, Dr. Miller walked in and signed my chest, marking me to be sure he would be cutting open the right person.  After a few short minutes with my dad, step-mom, and girlfriend, I was taken to the operating room. Ready to be rolled into the operating room! Surprisingly, I was excited as...

When replacing an Aortic Valve, doctors have a few choices of which valve to put into their patient.  Basically, the two groups of valves to choose from are tissue valves and mechanical valves. A tissue valve compared to a mechanical valve. Tissue Valves  are usually taken from pigs or cows .  They are a great option because they do not require the patient to be on  an anti-coagulant but he negative side is that they only last 10-15years before they would need to be replaced.  This means the patient would need open-hear surgery multiple times. Mechanical Valves  are popular due to the fact that they last forever, so there should not be a need for further open-heart surgeries.  The negative to receiving a mechanical valve is that the patient will need to be on an anticoagulant, most commonly Coumadin, for the remainder of their life.  This prevents their body from clotting to valve that it views as a "foreign object." So my decision....

On May 9th, I met the man who, one day very soon, will cut my heart open.  After my cardiologist determined that my Aortic Valve was too narrow, and the regurgitation caused by it is too extreme, I was sent to see a cardiac/thoracic surgeon named Doctor Miller. As we discussed all of the information about my heart that I already knew, and already mentioned in my first blog post, something new came up.  In addition to having a faulty valve, my Ascending Aorta is also oversized.  Basically, at birth my body lacked a protein.  The result is that my Aortic Valve has two cusps instead of the normal three and that my Ascending Aorta has expanded.  A normal Ascending Aorta is 2.5cm in diameter.  My Aorta is 4.7 cm. This is something that I was not aware of, but is apparently pretty common.  When a cardiologist looks at an Echocardiogram, I guess that the focus is the valve function, and sometimes the Ascending Aorta is not noticed. So what does this al...

My Heart History When I was born, there was a complication.  My Aorta valve, the one responsible for pumping oxygenated blood from my heart into my body, was too narrow.  In fact, it was so narrow that I needed an emergency surgery to keep me alive.  Luckily, doctors knew what to do.  They placed a flexible tube into my femoral artery, traced it all of he way to my heart, stuck a balloon into the narrow valve, inflated the balloon, and widened the narrowing enough to keep me alive.  This is called a  Balloon Valvuloplasty .  One cannot make this kind of thing up. This emergency surgery was meant to last me until I was fully grown, at which point I would need my Aortic Valve replaced. So I waited.  I had yearly check-ups until I was 18, the point when docs said I would need a replacement valve.  18 years old came and went and the doctors decided that 21 was my new goal.  I made it to 21 years of age with no issue so we decided to...