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Crossing over from prostate cancer forum.

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Posted 6/24/2017 1:47 PM (GMT 0)
Hello,

I joined Healingwell in 2008 after having prostate cancer. I found the posts concerning prostate cancer very useful and informative. Happily I've been able to put prostate cancer behind me since my PSA has been undetectable since my surgery. Hopefully it'll stay that way.

In 2012 I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and spent 2 years on chemo. I'm presently in remission and hopefully it'll stay that way.

So here I am. I spent a good part of my life with a heart murmur that I just ignored. Whenever a doctor listened to my heart he would point out that I had a heart murmur and I would say yeah, I know. Last summer my primary doctor insisted that I see a cardiologist, which I did. I had an echo and was diagnosed with severe mitral valve regurgitation.

It was determined that I would need open heart surgery to repair the valve. Several tests were performed to determine the condition of my arteries and my heart. They performed a catheterization to determine the health of my arteries. They did another echo with the probe in my throat and another on my neck. The results came back indicating that my heart was strong and my arteries were clear. That was good news.

I'm a long distance runner and I believe that the intense exercise played a big part in my overall health. The doctors told me I would greatly improve my running performance after surgery. With that thought in mind I eagerly went into surgery last December. Since then I've been convalescing, spent time in cardiac rehab, and doing as much exercise as I can at home.

My convalescence didn't really go as well as predicted. A week after leaving the hospital an artery in my nasal cavity hemorrhaged and put me back in the hospital for a few more days. I've been suffering dizzy spells when trying to go upstairs and several chest events such as PVCs, chest pains, tightness, and shortage of breath. My cardiologist put me on fludrocortisone and metoprolol to calm my chest events and bring up my blood pressure. There were undesirable side effects caused by the metoprolol so I was switched to bystolic. Presently I feel normal with no chest events or dizzy spells when doing regular daily activities.

For the past few weeks I've been trying rebuild my stamina using the treadmill and stationary cycling. In the beginning I could barely walk a half mile. Happily it's been steadily improving to the point where I can do intervals (run 1 minute / walk 1 minute, repeat) for 6 miles. I'm doing this on the treadmill. I haven't had enough confidence to try this on the road yet.

Today I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get back to all the activities I was doing before surgery. It's been a little harder than the doctors predicted, but I think I'm going to make it. Now I hope I can contribute some of my experience back to the discussions on this forum.

Thanks for listening, Bob
Posted 6/24/2017 9:27 PM (GMT 0)
Bob, I'm active on the PC forum, welcome to the heart forum. You'll find it's not very active, the way the pc forum is.

about 6 months after my prostatectomy , in a routine checkup, I had an abnormal ekg, which led to a heart Ct scan, which led to a cardiac catch, resulting in 2 stents. I've got a heavy plaque load, CAC score of 937. I had just gotten past the RALP (mentally and physically), and this destroyed me for quite a while.
But I got over it and try my best to eat right and exercise. Bad knee won't let me run so I do a fair amount of walking, that's about it.

Now I've had wo rises in a row, on PSA, went fro, .<02, to .02 to .033. So SRT may be my next adventure. :-(

Seems like it never ends
Posted 6/25/2017 3:48 AM (GMT 0)
hi and welcome. a 6 week cardiac rehab program is a must post surgery. hopefully the forum picks up, had been pushing it along for a long time now. been depressed and things. had bp x 2. good to see ya post pratoman.
Posted 8/30/2017 4:03 AM (GMT 0)

Pratoman said...
Bob, I'm active on the PC forum, welcome to the heart forum. You'll find it's not very active, the way the pc forum is.

about 6 months after my prostatectomy , in a routine checkup, I had an abnormal ekg, which led to a heart Ct scan, which led to a cardiac catch, resulting in 2 stents. I've got a heavy plaque load, CAC score of 937. I had just gotten past the RALP (mentally and physically), and this destroyed me for quite a while.
But I got over it and try my best to eat right and exercise. Bad knee won't let me run so I do a fair amount of walking, that's about it.

Now I've had wo rises in a row, on PSA, went fro, .<02, to .02 to .033. So SRT may be my next adventure. :-(

Seems like it never ends

OMG, I jump over to look at another forum here, and wham.. Pratoman is here!

Hey, this might not be directly related to your heart condition... but I did want to chime in that I had a AFIB issue about 2 years ago ... and I had it fixed with cardiac ablation.
When the fixed it, they found another electrical issue that was artifically slowing down my heart.. so they fixed that too.

It was the best surgery of my life... it felt like my engine in my car was working 100% again... I lost weight, and felt like a million $'s ... until the PC diagnosis smile

anywho, thought I would share.

Zzarth
Posted 8/30/2017 6:32 AM (GMT 0)
keep strong my friends. and posting. we need to keep the forum from chf!!!
Posted 12/12/2018 12:02 AM (GMT 0)
Here’s a little update on my heart problems.

I never was able to get my stamina back to normal after the first surgery. In fact, it began to slowly worsen. When I would get up in the night to relieve myself I would sometimes black out and go crashing down on the toilet or the floor.

For reasons that I’ll never understand, 3 cardiologists over the next year and a half couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The first cardiologist said he had no idea what was wrong. He adjusted my meds and told me to come back in three months. The second cardiologist wanted to put me on meds that would raise my blood pressure to around 150. He said that my heart was strong and could take it. The third cardiologist told me there was nothing wrong with me, I was doing great for a 78 year old.

I got an infection in my elbow when it was cut open during one of my falls. It was a serious infection and it put me in the hospital for several days. During my hospital stay the doctors tried to find out what was causing the blackouts. They did a cardiac echo and a TEE which they spent a lot of time on, but they didn’t arrive at any conclusion.

My daughter collected all my medical records and sent them to Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. They immediately got back to me and told me I had to get there as soon as possible. At the same time my fourth cardiologist looked at the echo and TEE and told me my left ventricle was underfilling, but didn’t know why.

I went to Cleveland and they put me through three days of extensive testing. They told me I had a near catastrophic failure of the mitral valve. The plan was to operate and replace the valve with a tissue valve.

After surgery the doc told me that he didn’t have to replace the valve; he repaired it. The annuloplasty ring that was used in the first surgery to stabilize the valve had come partially loose and was causing one of the leaflets to block blood flow into the left ventricle. At the same time there was about a 50 percent regurgitation.

It’s no wonder the left ventricle was underfilling! It absolutely amazes me how three cardiologists over a two year period couldn’t figure this out!

Now I feel great! No more blacking out, no more dizziness. I’m back to running. I’ve done a couple of 5K races recently, and am signed up for a half marathon in April.

The lesson learned here is if you don’t think your doctor is solving your medical issues, get a second opinion. Get a third and even a fourth opinion.

Best regards,
Bob
Posted 1/18/2019 11:34 PM (GMT 0)
Bob I've followed you over, from another forum , Here is my story for some info.
I hope you are all as well as can be, ... I battled Prostate Cancer from the end of 2017 - 2018 just as i was feeling better and my PSA hit 0.41 and recovering from it, this hits ,

I had severe shortness of breath and constantly tired and sometimes get lightheaded , has most of the test done and thought i had either some pulmonary issues or just from the radiation treatments 2 months ago and 2 ECHO's later reveled severe mitral valve regurgitation I knew something was wrong i could barley get up a flight of starts without huffing and puffing. and my legs were swelling up a bit. yesterday the Dr redid the ECHO himself and confirmed the diagnosis. And said you need this repaired. Being a Veteran and no other medical insurance i don't have many options but i have to say i have always been happy with my care at the VA.. I live in New Jersey they said they will send me to NYU and a Dr called Eugene Grossi at NYU Langone.


went to see him and he said you need a Mitral valve , tricuspid and Afib repair a mouth full , to say the least , yesterday I did my TTE and Cath test adn form what i was told all looked good I go meet the Dr aagain next week
too get some more questions answered and discuss my case .

I know have afib and i have a pacemake to boot. I travel extensively for my work and fly very often long haul flights. But as my wife says without your health it wont matter , so for those with some pre op experience , i have a few questions how do you deal with the extreme shortness of breath are there any tricks to help make it more manageable and take less strain off the heart . For me as im sure for most the mental dwelling and worrying is overwhelming to think of OHS i couldn't think of anything worse to worry about .

During my day at the hospital yesteday everyone had noting but praises for Dr Grossi who has 37 years of experience and is a professor at NYU kinda made me feel better but im stull the one hes gpoing to cut open.

thansk

John
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