This posting is a continuation of the pity party that I indulged in a month ago. I just reread your comments and your loving support. It helped me up and out of my pity party, then and gives me strength, now. It meant so much to me and helped me enormously that you all came to my rescue and that we are always here for each other. Thank you! We are just so great at this loving support and good advice thing!
After the big meeting, I will post the outcome and the plans they have for me and my aortic valve. I know that the surgery will go fine. The thing that bothers me is that having studied metaphysics for some years, I believe that the heart is sentient as is the brain. How will I feel in my heart with a foreign, namely the pig's part plus whatever else they put in there to secure the pig's part in place? Will I feel strongly or will some of my feeling be left in the operating room? Will they get the right size of pig that has the same valve size as my valve? Where do they get the pig from? Do they grow the part in the lab? What do they do with the rest of the pig if it is from a whole pig? My girlfriend says that I should give thanks for the piggy. I am not anywhere ready for that, yet.
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jersey-jazz
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I'm just letting off steam. I will be going obediently and doing whatever it takes to get fixed. If I really do need another aortic valve, I hope that they plan on doing it as soon possible. You are so right, of course, about modern medicine. Look at us, for example. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for modern medicine. I really am very grateful for the drugs that are helping us fight the good fight.
Being a student of metaphysics you likely have pondered the oneness of creation. You likely know that photons are light wavecontained in all matter. If you are a meditator, perhaps meditating on these truths, scanning your body in meditation will bring you peace and gratefulness. Know that the body serves our purpose and the essence and purpose of your life of who you are will not cch a nbge but may deepen and enlighten. Wish you the best. 🌺
I hope that you appointment goes very well and that you get the answers that you need to feel comfortable with what your doctors recommend. Medicine has come so far. I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers. Please keep us updated and know you have much love and support from all of us. Sending hugs.
Dear LibraryGeek---I too make great use of the library. Thank you for your positive comment. In all this, I have neglected thinking about my heart working better. I am concentrating on my heart not being complete the way it was designed. In college, I was taught that there is no soul but metaphysics contradicts that and my current thinking is that there is. I need to deepen my thought on all this and get to the place where medicine is. Perhaps when I get to put some questions to the doctors and they answer to my satisfaction, they will clear my thinking. Just now, I am not yet balanced.
Hi Jersey, my mom is due to get the same surgery sometime in the future so I’ve learned a bit about it. In her case they’ll do it via a minimally-invasive TAVR surgery using long wires and cameras inserted into a vein rather than cutting into the chest, which is great, hope that’s your case as well.
If the doctors elect to use a pig valve, it’s because pig hearts are very similar to humans (!) and can provide perfectly-sized “replacement parts,” in this case helping your blood flow freely to and from the heart. I like the Buddhist point of view that all living beings are equally important and worthy of compassion. So this could be seen as a very meaningful gift from the pig😊 🙏🏼
Thank you, LDR1 for reminding me of the Buddhist point of view. What I get from those teachings is of the insignificance of each of us and that we are all part of and attached to the universe. I am getting closer in my mind to accepting the pig as a whole and his/her gift to me. Still, I wonder what happens to the rest of the pig. Do they kill the pig just for the piece that will be going to me or is that part grown in the laboratory? Please pass on my good wishes to your mom and let me know when her time for the operaition is so I can send prayers.
jersey jazz- 23 years ago my 40 year old hubby had his aortic valve replaced… it is a lot to think about and I am feeling for you as this gets closer. He had what they called a “ humanised valve” from a person. It has lasted longer and not needed to be replaced… so we are grateful for that persons gift. As for your pig… you just have to pray that he has a very joyous life in the farm and then just one very bad day.
For us, the very worst of it came, on the drive in the dark to the early morning surgery… while our children still slept… we realized the enormity of the situation if things went wrong. And became emotional. That was a tough drive in. I’m sure you will do just fine and try to remain calm. Panic will not help and makes us feel out of control. Deep breaths! Let me know if have info that can help in any way.
Dear Bettybuckets - Wow! Yours and your husband's story is huge. I'm glad that it is still working well. Does he have to take medicine? Strangely, I am not nervous about the operation partly because it will be with such a well renowned hospital. I live relatively close to NYC, two to two and a half hours away. So, I am taking advantage of such a hospital and its' doctors. To me, as mentioned above, it is all about removing and replacing part of my heart which is, of course, central to my being. I am a moderate in most things but a little off the wall in some ways. I am the only person I know that has never had her ears pierced. I do not believe in damaging in any way the beautiful body that has been created. When I had to have little pieces of metal put into both breasts before surgery, I went and had my portrait taken because I thought that I would be a different person or my life would change is some way. It hasn't for any of those reasons.
I am with you sister on keeping the body god gave us… so it was surprising to everyone that I caved and got a tiny tattoo together with molly when she begged me to do it “together” after she took family leave to fly to New Zealand to be with me and then had to go through 14 days locked in a quarantine hotel and be tested every few days just to be with me when I got the MBC diagnosis.
It was winter so I was wearing long pants and chose a tattoo of a tiny map of New Zealand that fit on my ankle which would be well covered up by my pant leg. Afterwards, molly said “ surprising that you whose to you the tattoo there, Mum…since you never ever wanted one”. Well it’s hidden I said… she said “Well not in summer!”
Sorry I got off on a tangent thst I wanted to say about your upcoming surgery … yes gi to the good nyc hospital where they do this routinely. We picked a big boston hospital with a great Dr. Twenty years later while hiking on an organized trip we met a child heart surgeon frim Colorado who had trained under the great heart surgeon Rick had… so we asked how he was? He ironically had a need for aortic valve replacement but waited tio long to get it and it didn’t go well. Talk about the shoe makers children going barefoot!
That is such a shame about the surgeon that operated on Rick. I'm sorry to read about him. That gives me more reason to opt for surgery as soon as possible while I am still relatively healthy. To be really clear, after I was switched from Letrozole which gave me some lasting side effects, to. which is kind to me, I am really doing very well. I am exhausted most of the time but am still keeping up with a five or six hour day rather than an eight hours day. I consider my five or six hours a gift from heaven. If it weren't for the chemotherapies, targeted therapies and various cancer drugs, I doubt that we would be doing this. Here is to the cancer researchers and the doctors who keep us around!
wow! When you think about it which I just did they must think you are going to be around for years and years to do this surgery on you. And yes you need to do early… they watched rick since his 20’s knowing he would need it but not wanting to do too soon as he would def need another one… so they watched for heart enlargement and encouraged him to do it at 40… when he needed it and not wait more years alas thst would be a different problem. I think you are being brave. And that our cancer treatments are amazing that so many of us can thrive for years beyond our MBC!
Honestly, I do not think that I would be alive today at eighty-five and thriving if it had not been for the drugs and the surgical interventions. Specifically, I had hormone positive the left breast but had HER2 in the right breast and, as it turned out, twelve lymph nodes in the right axilla that had been cancerous but had been closed down by all the chemo and targeted therapy. The Her2 would have been my downfall. I have to be grateful for the doctors and nurses at Memorial Sloan Kettering for such consistantly excellent cutting edge care.
I hope your doc meeting goes well. The initial news must have been a bit of a shock. I’m sure it’s perfectly normal to go through the fear and accompanying questions you have about it. I recall when I had my very first mastectomy surgery approaching I spent time sobbing with fear that I would die on the table. I was paranoid of leaving my then young child behind without a mother.
At a later time I had to have part of my pec muscle removed and to solve the problem of what was left being too thin - they added some “material” (can’t recall the name of it) . Only because I asked what it was actually made of did I learn it was actually processed tissue from a cadaver. Quite gross! And yet what could I do about it? Nada. So I can relate to the dislike of something foreign being inside you. It won’t change you for the worse, it’s something we need to find peace with and accept. I like LDR1’s Buddhist idea
Dear 13plus I thank you because you understand having been through something like the mental anguish that I am going through. Yes, I am trying to come to terms with it and am drawing from all of you on this exceptional forum and from teachings of some spiritual masters.
On a more frivolous metaphysical note, I just finished a mystery by Alexander McCall Smith called Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, in which the protagonist, philosopher Isabelle Dalhousie, meets a man who has another man's heart (transplant) and has strong visions in which he sees part of the other man's life. He feels he will die if he doesn't resolve it. Isabelle finally solves what he is seeing, and he is able to thank the father of the man whose heart he has, and forgive the father for neglect of his son on behalf of the heart. Along the way, they speculate about whether and how he has the memory of the other man. So ...will you see the pig's mother's face and be filled with warm feelings? Is it a man or woman pig, or a child, or nonbinary? They also speculate about whether animals have souls. Wish I could give you the book. You are just in Jersey, across the GWB; it is in my give-away pile.
85! You must be in terrific shape if they want to do this surgery on you. Unbelievable.
After reading all these supportive comments, I thought I should remind you of my earlier response when you first mentioned needing to have an aortic valve replaced at your age.
Mine was replaced in 2018 when I was almost 73. I very much would have liked a TAVR (which I believe may always involve a rubber valve, not a pig valve), but was told that I was too young for it since rubber valves do not last as long. Anyway, I ended up with open heart surgery and have a long white scar down the middle of my chest. This is not the way to go if it can be avoided. Given your age, I'm sure your surgeons will recommend a TAVR. You should be released from hospital the next day. Not a big deal at all, so please quit upsetting yourself!
Dear Cindy---- Yes, of course I remember reading your posting of that time when you went through that terrible ordeal. Was it a very long recuperative time and process? Did you mention what your aortic valve is made of? That I don't remember. At the first meeting, I was told that if I pass muster (they did not use those words), It will be the TAVR. with a pig's part. If it goes ahead as I think it will, it will be so much easier and so less invasive than what you went through. As I wrote previously, it is not the surgery as much as the replacement of my heart with something else. I am getting over all of it and calming down. After all, all of us, have had to get used to lots of things that we never contemplated in our wildest dreams.
I didn't find it a "terrible ordeal". My husband was rather scared because he was told that I "died on the table twice" because my heart had to be shocked. That didn't bother me as I know I have an erratic heartbeat (QT prolongation), and it happened again while I was in recovery and awake when the nurses suddenly rushed in to shock my heart. Anyway, I was home in four or five days, no worse for the experience itself.
We all vary in how we react emotionally to these physical events. I think I have a phlegmatic nervous system, and modelled my behaviour after my mother's. She raised five children totally by herself, and only missed two days as a school teacher before she suddenly died from a heart attack at age sixty. She always "knew" that she would die young as she had rheumatic fever twice and was told this had affected her heart.
you will get used to this new part like I have with some tooth implants and eye lenses. Listen to some meditation and focus on keeping your body calm. You will be fine 🌸
Come to think of. it, I have tooth implants as well. It is just that it is my heart which I considered the center of my being. I am really quite calm now and ready for whatever. Thank you! We are such wonderful supportive group.
Dear Betty ---I updated today. It should be somewhere on the forum. More delays, more scans, tomorrow,Friday, decisions next Wednesday. We will be missing you but thinking about you on your trip to your other homeland. I am sure you will have a wonderful time.You are built that way. My hope is that the latest shxx that has hit the fan for you is not too debilitating. Further, there is lots of things that are good about wheelchairs when they are in airports. Big hugs!
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