healing the heart

i've always had a problem with my heart.it didn't stop me doing anything but in unusual rhythm.that was something i've had all my life. i was asymptomatic.i had no problems whatsoever. i felt fine.i managed to give myself of hernia in december of 2011.my primary care physician said, well, you have a mitral valve prolapsed, so i'd likeyou to have an echocardiogram done before you have the operation.and i was thinking, no, i'm not gonna have one done, it's not necessary,it's a benign condition. but afterwards i went to the lab, i hadthe echocardiogram done and two days later

they called me up and told me i needto see a cardiologist urgently. the mitral valve has two flaps, which [inaudible].one of them just simply wasn't working. it was just flapping around.my heart had enlarged. the ventricle to pump more blood throughthe atrium because there was more blood in it, was enlarged and it wasn'tworking properly at all. my heart was failing.the function of mitral valve is to prevent the blood leaking back when the left ventricleis trying to pump it towards the body. you don't want it going backinto the left upper chamber. that's what the mitral valveis designed to do.

in mr. leitner-wise's case his regurgitationor the leakiness in the mitral valve had progressed over the courseof last two or three decades from trace of mild, which is negligible, mostof us have that, lived it, that's of no consequences, to moderate. and by the time he was coming in fora surgical consultation it was severe. i have friends who are surgeons, so thefirst thing i did was contact them and say do you know surgeons who specialize in this.and it so happened that one of the surgeons was located in the hospital behindher house which, really, we can walk across the yard and get to it, so itwould be a logical place to have surgery.

the surgeon was adamant that he wanted todo the traditional going through the front. i didn't like the idea of having my chest cracked, so i wanted to look forsome sort of alternative. whenever a patient comes to a surgeon theycome with lot of anxiety, so minimally abrasive approach that i currently adaptis a small cut on the right side of the chest which measures about anywherebetween three to five centimeters. there is no bone cutting as comparedto the conventional approach. the pain is much that less.the recovery is that much quicker. so when they hear all these, a lot ofthat anxiety starts coming down.

the studio we're in is actually my wife'syoga studio and she found this wonderful location on april of this year, coincidently,the same month i have heart surgery. i've had echocardiogram carried out sincesurgery which has confirmed the repair is perfect. there's no mitral valve leakage at all.there's no regurgitation. these are all the good things you want to hear.long term i just have to have an echocardiogram done once a year. the key is to get to is to a team thatcan promise a very high chance, preferably a 99 plus percent chance of a successfulrepair because that is what makes impact on the durability and the quality ofyour life that you're asking for.

at every stage i had the backup of johnshopkins behind me, so i kind of wasn't on my own, so to speak.my family, we weren't on our own. i'm very pleased to be in theposition i'm in today. i'm kind of lucky in that respect.