Nan, Elvina came back home 10 days ago. She had a follow-up with a doctor here who has worked at Mayo before. The doctor gave her steroid to treat the inflammation. Her heart beat is still around...
Nan, She is feeling much better. The echo looks fine. The JVD also came down though not completely yet. She has no fever. Thank God. The doctor said her current condition is actually what they...
Dear iamhopeful, Welcome to the forum. Hope you will be getting better and better. Not sure whether this info is relevant to your question but my wife was told by the doctor that after...
Hi Nan, The surgery was on Wed. She woke up on Thur morning and left ICU in the late afternoon of Fri. The IV line in her neck was taken out on Sat. We are more comforted to see her less...
Dear Nan and John, Elvina is resting in the ICU in her second night. She has 4 chest tubes which are thicker than the last time. During this operation, they did not find any other problems except the...
Elvina is now in ICU. The removal of blood clot causes bleeding and that's why she has been put on a heart lung machine for about 2.5 hours, which was longer than the bypass time during the...
Hi Everyone, Elvina is on the 2nd operation now. Before we were told that this surgery is to remove the hematoma and to explore what else causes the heart compression and plerual effusion after the...
Dear all, It has been almost 5 weeks after Elvina's pericardiectomy. Her condition is not good. She had cardiac cath last Thur and it shows the pressure is still high in the heart chambers. The...
Hi, The needle procedure ("thoracentesis") withdrew 400 cc of fluid from the left side of her chest on Mon. And on Tue, she had the same procedure done on the right side of the chest, and that...
Nan, She is not checking mails but I keep telling her what our companions post here. She had increased shortness of breath on Saturday night, and she decided to go to the emergency room at midnight...
Hi Nan, Elvina is not feeling well because of the persistent low-grade fever, shortness of breath and fast heart rate. Physically she feels worse than before the surgery. In the re-admission last...
Elvina still has low-grade fever, and according to Dr Nishimura, the water retention was not reduced that much as expected though she does not look like swelling and actually she lost a bit of weight...
Hi, Elvina was discharged (again) yesterday. She continues on diuretic pill (Lasix), pain medicine (oxycodone), and calcium channel blocker (verapamil for lowering heart rate from fluctuating high...
Nan, Both Elvina and I were glad to hear that your echo is totally normal ! We saw Dr. Nishimura for follow-up today. He believes the echo was interpreted wrong. The mitral regurgitation should be...
AmyDB, I don't know about the new CTs scans you mentioned but Elvina had the CT scan this year and it clearly shows the calcification in pictures. If there is no calcification, I think only the...
We are glad to have Elvina back from hospital. She feels much better breathing in fresh air and has her own life without being put on all the tests every day during hospitalization. We found three...
Dr Schaff did not stop by today but the physician assistant ran through the echo report with us. It says moderate tricuspid valve regurgitation and moderate-severe mitral valve regurgitation. Now we...
John - Thanks for your visit. It was nice to meet you too. The discharge is delayed to be Tue. Elvina had an echocardiogram this afternoon. The doctor ran through the result with us. We might not...
Hi Nan, Thanks for your sharing. The last chest tube was just out tonight and she now feels much better. This is the first day we have seen her able to smile since the surgery. So it is very...
This is the fifth day after the surgery. Elvina is improving. The most difficult time was the first two days right after the ICU because of the legacies from surgery, the side effects from medication...
John - Elvina left ICU yesterday. Thanks for your regards. She is making progress but most of the time, she is tired and sleepy. Think she may not be good enough to see and talk to you tomorrow yet...
Hi Nan, We have 2 moms, and Elvina's brother and sister with us. Now there are 4 chest tubes in her and for the last 28 hours in ICU, I saw the containers have accumulated 2000 ml of blood in...
Elvina's heart rate has now come down to 85 to 90 per minute. We were more comforted. She is still in ICU. She looks tired and weak. We can now visualize her heart pumping over the shirt, and she...
John, Elvina was in the operating room for 3.5 hours. The heart lung bypass machine was on for 80 minutes. At ICU, she is in big pain and just had one more chest tube, in addition to the 3 chest...
The surgery on Elvina was done successfully. Surgeons performed pericardiectomy to remove the whole front part of pericardium, and fixed the partial anomalous pulmonary venous return. During the...
Hi Nan, The bypass was just off. The surgery was done and they are "closing it up". Dr Schaff will come out and speak to us around 4:30 pm. Any specific questions you think we should ask? Thanks for...
Elvina was put on heart lung bypass machine 30 min ago. (The family is at waiting room area and the nurse keeps updating us the progress.) Pray she is doing fine and the surgery will be successful....
John, Elvina had cardiac catherization just 3 months ago in Hong Kong and it was diagnostic of contrictive pericarditis. The doctor here wanted that to be done again to rule out any other problems...
Things are going as scheduled at Mayo. Elvina had the cardiac catherization today. This was the 4th time she had done in the past 10 years but this is the first one that she could get out from bed...
Hi Everyone - As scheduled, we arrived at Rochester on July 3rd and we had a great day yesterday watching the fireworks here. We saw Dr. Nishimura today and Elvina has gone through tests today: chest...
Catherine - We were impressed by you and look forward to hearing from you going forward in this website. Pray you are doing well. Dear all - A friend of friend suggested Dr Joseph Dearani at Mayo for...
Hi Cathy, We read the newspaper articles about you on the internet, one published in 2002 and one in 2005. We also read all the threads and knew about how you and others in this forum have gone...
Dear companions, Elvina and I are counting down the days towards July 3rd. I had no experience or knowledge on the hospital system, and am now worried that as July 3 is the day before the holiday of...
Mrozek, I meant whether any test reveals the "adhesion" is heavy or not? or the doctors only know that during surgery? Ken...
Hi Everybody - I am the husband of Elvina, and want to give thanks to a lot of you. This is the toughest time in my life time. Hi Mrozek, Thanks for your input. You mentioned the adhesion. So any...