Emily's Profile

Hello everyone! I am 32 years old and facing aortic valve replacement and aortic aneurysm surgery in January. I was diagnosed with a bicuspid valve at 3 months old and I've been followed and monitored for aortic stanosis ever since. Surgery was always going to happen at some point in my life and its just happened to come up a little sooner than I had hoped. At my annual checkup earlier this year, my husband and I discussed having children. It prompted my cardiologist to order a CT scan "in order to get the whole picture" before we went down the path to pregnancy. Well, unfortunately (fortunately?) thats when they discovered the aneurysm (4.5cm) on my ascending aorta. Children are out of the question until the valve (which has always been borderline severe) and aneurysm are fixed. It took a year of research and second and third opinions to decide to go ahead and have surgery. So here I am, almost a month away. I'm not quite ready yet. I'm still scared about the procedure and recovery. But reading all the other journals is definitely helping.