So let's talk about what brought this all about. Every year since I've been born (sometimes twice a year) I've made a trip to Mobile to see my cardiologist. This year's trip was this past Tuesday (March the 21st). After seeing the doctor, we did the normal echo. The results weren't as good as they've been being and so the doc decided we needed to do a stress test (Mon. the 27th) and a heart cath (Thurs. the 30th). If you check out the wikipedia link on the right, you'll see some graphs and an explanation that the severity of the condition is based on an estimate of the pressure gradiant between the left ventricle and the aortic valve. Ignoring the units of measure, 40 is considered pretty good, 50 okay but not great, the 60s are border-line and anything above means it's time to take a closer look, hence the heart cath. The bright spot in all of this is that the echo only provides an estimate of the pressure, not an absolute reading. It's entirly possible that when we do the cath, the actual pressure will be found to be much less than the 72 they estimated last Tuesday. If that's the case, then surgery can be deferred and all is well. If the actual turns out to be closer to the estimate, then we're looking at surgery to replace the valve.
In the next couple of posts, I hope to recount what memories I do have from when I had my first surgery. I've also got some more links to post to the right of the page. I did add an article I found at the UAB website about the doctor that did my first surgery. Dr. Pacifico is retiring at the end of June this year and the article talks about his history and the work he's done in his time as a doctor. After reading it, it's pretty wild to me to think that this guy has actually worked on me.
Anyway, that's all for now. Hopefully I'll find a picture to put up in my profile one of these days.
Thanks for reading,
Paul
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