I've been dealing with some medical issues the past few months, and I think I know enough now about what's going on to talk about it now
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So sorry you have to deal with this, but really relieved to hear they caught it early. I'm somewhat familiar with the condition. I'm actually in the process of getting a specific connective tissue disorder diagnosis (basically I'm in the "you have one but we're not 100% sure which one" stage at the moment) so I may understand a bit what you're going through right now.
If you ever need someone to talk to, please let me know! Dunno if you have my email/IM still?
The worst part of it all was getting the initial diagnosis, because my original doctor should be fired. He left me the news in a voicemail, just stating that my aorta was quite enlarged and that I needed to see a surgeon. Scared the shit out of me
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Well, shit. At least it is treatable, and you haven't got a whole host of life-altering complications. Open-cavity surgery is weird, but if you're new to it, take it from an old hand that it isn't nearly as bad as you think it will be. Plus you end up with a super sexy scar with a heroic-sounding story to impress the ladies. ~_^
I had my entire torso split open in 2001, because they couldn't figure out what was wrong from the x-rays. It turned out that I had a 16-pound teratoma that ate my right ovary. For about two weeks, I had a zipper (well, staples) running from my ribcage to my pubic bone. It looked awesome, and felt really weird. Along with hysterectomy scar, it forms a giant hammer of Thor rune, which is honestly pretty cool.
The recovery wasn't too bad, there were several post-op checks, to make sure everything was healing properly, but mostly it was just hanging out and avoiding exertion while things knitted back together. Just make sure they give you adequate meds for pain, they've gotten really stingy with those in recent years. It hurts quite a bit in the beginning, but not nearly as badly as I thought it would. Expect to be tired a lot, especially in the first several days after surgery, when your body is doing the lion's share of recovery.
Yeah, if I'd had any decent games at the time, it would have made the time go by a lot faster!
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Holy crap! That's crazy; glad they managed to get that out safely.
If I'm lucky, if/when it becomes time for surgery, a relatively new option will be available to me, where they 3D print a mesh based on the shape of your aorta and put that around it to constrain it, instead of having to remove it and replace it. It's been done in the U.K. for around ten years now with great success, but hasn't been adopted elsewhere yet since there hasn't been any big clinical trials of it. It's supposed to work just as well if not better than the traditional replacing, with much faster and less painful recovery time.
A friend of mine has Marfans. He is 52 and jsut went in for his third heart reset and now they have him on medicine for it.
With you being young, you have a much better chance at controlling any more problems along the way. Good luck with that. Again, I hope your surgery goes well.
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I'm somewhat familiar with the condition. I'm actually in the process of getting a specific connective tissue disorder diagnosis (basically I'm in the "you have one but we're not 100% sure which one" stage at the moment) so I may understand a bit what you're going through right now.
If you ever need someone to talk to, please let me know! Dunno if you have my email/IM still?
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I didn't know that you've had that kind of surgery; if you don't mind my asking, what was it for, and what was recovery like?
The optimist in me thinks that if it happens maybe I would have the time to blow through my backlog of games :P
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The recovery wasn't too bad, there were several post-op checks, to make sure everything was healing properly, but mostly it was just hanging out and avoiding exertion while things knitted back together. Just make sure they give you adequate meds for pain, they've gotten really stingy with those in recent years. It hurts quite a bit in the beginning, but not nearly as badly as I thought it would. Expect to be tired a lot, especially in the first several days after surgery, when your body is doing the lion's share of recovery.
Yeah, if I'd had any decent games at the time, it would have made the time go by a lot faster! ( ... )
Reply
If I'm lucky, if/when it becomes time for surgery, a relatively new option will be available to me, where they 3D print a mesh based on the shape of your aorta and put that around it to constrain it, instead of having to remove it and replace it. It's been done in the U.K. for around ten years now with great success, but hasn't been adopted elsewhere yet since there hasn't been any big clinical trials of it. It's supposed to work just as well if not better than the traditional replacing, with much faster and less painful recovery time.
Reply
He is 52 and jsut went in for his third heart reset and now they have him on medicine for it.
With you being young, you have a much better chance at controlling any more problems along the way. Good luck with that. Again, I hope your surgery goes well.
Reply
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