I decided to take the day off work. I called my mom and talked to her for a while. I let her know I don’t blame her for anything – I don’t think anyone could have known this might happen, and I know she left there as soon as she could. I’ve talked to a few friends too. And there’s some people at my church I asked to pray for me. At the same time, I don’t want to make this a big deal. I mean, it is a problem – but I don’t think it will affect my life much, at least not right now.
It still doesn’t seem real. Probably because I feel fine. I don’t need treatment or medication or anything. Dr. Blerug told me there is nothing that I will start to feel unless things get worse, and they probably won’t for a long time. Later on, though, it might get narrower and have to be opened up again, or it might start to leak. Then I could feel like it’s hard to breathe, or my heart might start beating differently (Lisac, 2011).
If that happens, they could do surgery, or go in through one of my vessels and open it up again. If it gets really bad they might even need to replace the whole valve, but that’s not something I want to think about. I don’t even want to think about medication! (Lisac, 2011).
Although I’m not on anything right now, I might have to be on some blood thinners or something to keep my heartbeat regular in the future. They said that mild mitral stenosis is “significant” enough to get an echo done every year for a checkup, but it doesn’t mean anything will change for a very long time (Sanfilippo et al, 19).
Oh! There is one thing though. I’m going to the dentist later this week. They said that now I need to take antibiotics first, since I have this whole mitral valve stenosis thing happening with my heart. (Suleman et al, 8). That will have to continue every time I see the dentist, for the rest of my life. Again… if I had just had antibiotics once as a kid when I had strep throat, I wouldn’t need them now (Lisac, 2011).
