Michelle's Profile

I was born with a heart murmur 49 yrs ago. My Drs. through the years had always said that I'd grow out of it and never worried. Well I never grew out of it & here I am almost 50 contemplating open heart surgery. My condition (bicuspid valve) is hereditary my father has it & have passed it onto my son. I was sent to the cardiologist by my PCP around 18 years ago. They found at that time I had a bicuspid valve & have been monitoring the back flow every since (yearly) by ultrasounds. Fast forward to last year. Since I work in a hospital I went with a new cardiologist that works upstairs. So of course she ordered all these tests for me to have done. Not thinking that anything could be wrong, I got the call from her office while my plane was being boarded to Hawaii that they were going to refer me to the heart surgeon, not the kind of call you want to start off your vacation with. So back in October I had the angiogram and its been a spiral since then for me. She referred me to a heart surgeon (Dr. Thomas Molloy out of Portland, Oregon). He ordered a CT scan of my heart just to get a better picture. He found that I had an ascending aortic aneurysm going into the valve I need to have replaced. The measurement of my bulge is 4.7 and the thinnest is 5.0. I was told to start thinking of which valve I wanted to go with. In the beginning I was going to have evasive surgery to replace the valve, now I have to have open heart surgery to fix the bulge & valve. I'm so glad I found this web site to read everyone's stories & out comes because I am SO nervous about my next steps (calling the surgeon back to set up an appointment to move along with scheduling of surgery). I am hoping writing my story will help me come to grips with all of this. I know there is more to my heart story, at this time I am trying to wrap my brain around all of this. I have decided to go with a tissue valve instead of the mechanical. I don't take any prescriptions at this time in my life and taking blood thinners scares the heck out of me. I'll call the surgeon on Friday. Wish me luck!! Michelle