Rich's Posts

About 5 days after TAVR, I bent over to do something and must have caused the wound to open a little and leak blood. This was at the femoral artery and not at skin level. The blood pooled in my groin area and caused it to turn purple. I saw a local cardiologist who, after testing, said he was pretty sure it was just a small leak and should heal in a few days, which it did. Then I had a few days of feeling fantastic. It was followed by a strange 10 days. At first I was extremely fatigued and slept a lot. That lasted a couple of days and then I started having what seemed to be muscle pains on my upper body. They extended all around my chest, so I was concerned it might be related to either the stents or TAVR. It was a vague discomfort and I couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from. After several days the pain was clearly identifiable as on my left side at heart level. Then my blood pressure spiked over 200/100. I went to ER and after a couple nitro pills, BP was back to normal. EKG and chest x-ray were normal, so I checked myself out. Called local cardiologist who checked records from ER and said there was nothing to indicate a heart problem. Called the hospital that did stents and TAVR and they tried to be helpful, but didn't offer anything concrete I could do other than trying to move up my scheduled appointment. What was frustrating was I obviously had either a heart, muscle, or skeletal problem, and no one was addressing the muscle or skeletal possibility. I called my chiropractor and he was willing to work me in. After examining me, he felt the pain was likely muscular and not my heart. He did an adjustment and followed that with laser treatment. I still have discomfort today, but am just going to lie down and apply some ice to it. My blood pressure also seems to have returned to normal after 2 days of spiking. When I have had a bp spike in the past, it was diet related so maybe something I ate recently caused the spikes. When they mess with your heart, it can be hard to separate normal aches and pains from actual heart problems!