Oct 16: update and brief history

Yesterday was the 2 year anniversary of the first surgery. I certainly thought then that the worst was behind me.... For those new or late to this blog, here's the brief story: Found I had mitral valve prolapse with severe regurgitation (backward flow of blood) Feb, 2004 after a severe asthma attack from my trip to Egypt. Got better, got worse >>> complicated repair of the valve 10/15/04 when I was 41 years old (26 years younger than the average age of patient at that surgery). Kept having symptoms: fatigue, short of breath with any exercise, not much better than pre-surgery. No one believed me for a year, that's when I spoke to Dr. Cohn at a conference about a year after the surgery. He believed me. So, I went to Brigham in Boston, which is Harvard medical school's hospital, finally got correctly diagnosed May, 2006. Original repair left me with an unusual abnormality that caused the front leaflet on the valve to flip over when the heart is squeezing and block flow of blood outward. This is similar to a congenital problem that you hear young athletes dying of called IHSS or SAS. What most of you never knew is that there have been reports of those with my problem, SAM with left ventricular outflow obstruction, also suddenly dying. That's when I stopped climbing the stairs at work (I was trying to keep my muscles in some sort of shape). The first surgery was done cutting under my right breast, then through the right 3-4th ribs, meant to avoid cutting the sternum/breastbone. Because the first surgery was 10 hours, it left me with a weakness there, causing the lung to come out when I coughed, laughed or was bearing down. They were hoping to fix that during the second surgery, but it took too long because of all the scar tissue. Second mitral valve REPAIR (not replacement, Thank God) was the surgery August 10, then six weeks later the lung hernia repair on Sept 21, which is what I am still recovering from. Finally feeling better in last few days, although I've really been taking it easy. Just wanted to mark the prior anniversary...... Thanks for checking in, Laurie