Michael's Guestbook

Hi Michael, I was searching for pericarditis and your post came up. It seems we had the same surgeon, except my surgery was on August 16, 2016. I also had robotic surgery btw, and my recovery was extremely painful, not only from the surgery but a long standing episode of pericarditis. It was so painful! The good news is through taking colchicine and malaxicam eventually the inflammation subsided and I started to feel human again. Unfortunately my local cardiologist didn’t treat me for the pericarditis aggressively enough so I suffered longer than necessary, and he eventually sent me to a pulmonologist who stopped the malaxicam and put me on colchicine, which by itself didn’t work. I finally about five months into it made an appointment at CC in West Palm Beach, with a cardiologist there and she put me on both for three months. That worked, but it was a miserable road to get there. I, like you had robotic, and frankly, in retrospect I wish I had just had a minimally invasive sternotomy. I still have lots of numbness in my rib cage on the right, and I cannot go to sleep on my left side or my right arm falls asleep. This has been since the surgery. I agree that the distance is a real inconvenience after surgery. I went to Dr. Gillinov too and was set on doing robotic after all the reading I had done. Anyway, I get the impression it worked out well for you, but for me, hmmmmm. I have just this week been hit with another bout of pericarditis, I’d been doing well for about 8 months, exercising, feeling well except for the above mentioned nerve problems, and I caught a mild cold and it triggered the pericarditis again. Grrrrrrrr!have you had a continuous problem with this? I hope it’s not going to last this time, I caught it early and immediately started the meds. Any feedback at all would be appreciated! Thank you, Lise Bowles btw, I am now 63...