Ben's Profile

I'm a 42 year old male, born with a severely compromised aortic valve. Open heart surgery at 16 days old to repair the valve, and monitoring ever since. Was told growing up I'd need a valve replacement in my teens, then in my 20s, and then it sort of went to a "well, eventually" situation as nothing progressed for decades. A few years ago the plan was to hold off on doing any surgery until I hit my 50s. That changed a year ago when my aortic stenosis started slipping into the severe category. I've also got a 4.8cm aneurysm. I'm currently asymptomatic. My cardiologist wants to get a stress test scheduled to see how severe things are for me. I've got a wife and five kids, so I'm a bit nervous about all of this, but having read all of the wonderful success stories of others who had this surgery in their 40s, I'm starting to feel some hope! I'll try to keep this updated as things go on. After consulting with my prospective surgeon here in Seattle, he mentioned I'd be a great candidate for the Ross procedure. I'm willing to travel to a center of excellence for that, so I'm in the process of getting a second opinion from Dr. Stelzer at Mt Sinai, and hope to be able to get this done by end of year.