A symptom of aortic valve regurgitation (which is what caused the 2013 heart valve replacement) is coughing. I have been having a lot of coughing fits of late, for no apparent reason. After the surgical aortic valve replacement, the pain and misery of recovery made me wonder if surviving the procedure had been good or bad. I wondered if replacing it at end of valve life (expected to be 15 years) was going to be an obvious decision or not. I had a echocardiogram in the last hospital visit the valve was operating correctly.
Today, the surgical replacement has been replaced with trans-arterial valve replacement (TAVR): they run a catheter to your heart and drop in a new valve. I need a follow-up appointment with my cardiologist anyway, so I will raise this question with her. I am sure the TAVR will be far less intrusive and presumbably less painful, but there are risks anytime you fiddle with non-redundant working parts.
As a comment elsewhere pointed out, dry airplane air could also be a cause of the coughing fits.
Yikes! I'll be praying for you.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear this. I hope you are being over-dramatic. It would be a shame to lose you too early in life. You've still got more groundbreaking research to do and your family and your friends need you. I pray that you have many more years of health.
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain, literally. Breathing in this 0 degree weather causes me intense chest pain in my scar tissue from my by-pass surgery. Feels like I'm having 'the big one' until I get warm again.
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