To me, family heritage counts as much as environment. Death certificates outside the immediate family for your ancestors can be a big help showing what natural problems will possibly crop up and letting the doctor to be warned to keep a closer eye on those issues. Stroke runs in our family and I’ve already had one carotid artery roto-rooted. With luck, won’t need the other side done.
Your surgery was a BIG deal. So glad they kept their eye on it and that they got everything done at once. May that be the end of your serious problems.
Open heart surgery is no joke that’s for sure, the mental part was much harder on me than the physical part, there was a 3-week gap between when I agreed to the surgery and when I had the surgery, as much as you try, that’s all you think about.
Then in Cardiac ICU after the surgery, I was told I had entered stage 3 heart block and needed a pacemaker, mentally that was a hard thing for me to accept.
After I got home, the anxiety about whether your heart was going to hold up was a real thing.
That’s why I said Cardiac Rehab was the single best thing I did in recovery, the harder I worked the better I felt, and the anxiety went away because my heart was working great and held up.
You have two choices when it comes to heart valve replacement, you can choose a biologic valve, which in my case was a pig valve or a mechanical valve.
I chose the pig valve because with a mechanical valve you have to be on Warfarin every day for the rest of your life, with a pig valve I was on eloquis for 3 months, the pig valve lasts between 10-15 years and doesn’t require blood thinners for the rest of your life, and can be replaced with a procedure that goes thru the main artery in your groin, a one hour procedure with a one day stay in the hospital.