My open-heart surgery to replace my aortic valve and ascending aorta was on Nov. 19. After 9 days in the hospital I returned home the day before Thanksgiving.
The experience was terrible although my beloved sister and DH were at my side.
I have been home for 11 days. I’m still very weak but my pleural effusion (water around the lungs) has resolved so I can breathe. I’m walking around, doing (low intensity) Zumba and getting outside for walks. My fitness watch counted 2.0 miles on Tuesday. This completes Week 2 of an expected 6 week recovery so I’m trying to be patient.
My new aortic valve is 25 mm diameter. That’s an open area of about 5 square cm which is about 5 times the opening of my calcified aortic valve which was cut out and replaced.
I wouldn’t recommend open heart surgery to anyone unless your life depends on it. But if you need it, get it.
This sounds like really good news! Hope the 6 weeks passes quickly and you’re back to your normal fitness level!
I remember about 40 or 50 years ago, the dad of my daughter’s friend, who was quite a bit older than me, went for open heart surgery. He was very active and exercised regularly (wasn’t as common in the 70s/80s as it is today), and was a swimmer. He kept feeling weaker and weaker and it turned out that was because he wasn’t getting enough blood flow during exercise. So he went for the surgery, I think it was valve surgery, but I don’t recall the details (in my 20s, I wasn’t so interested in those details, today in my 60s I am much more interested), but after the surgery, when he started swimming again, he said that he almost immediately began to feel stronger, and after ramping up his fitness, he said he was stronger than ever. So to make a long story short, maybe your fitness level will be HIGHER after your full recovery!
