In 2004, I was excercising and swimming about 700 yards three to four times a week. gradually trying to increase my distance. At the beginning of April, I pushed myself to 900 yards one morning. A couple days later I was out of breath after swimming 50 yards. For the rest of the week I felt like I couldn’t get enough air. I didn’t realize it was “shortness of breath,” and is the primary symptom of congestive heart failure.
The symptom finally went away after a couple weeks. I tried to swim occasionally, but could not swim even 100 yards. About a month later, I was hiking in Eastern Tennessee, and couldn’t walk uphill more than 25 yards without becoming short of breath again. When I mentioned it to my sister, whom I was visiting, she asked a few questions, then calmly, but firmly, told me to call my primary care physician the day I got back home, and tell him I am short of breath.
I called, was asked to come in immediately, was sent over to a cardiologist, immediately had an echocardiogram done, and learned the news that my mitral valve prolapse, which I had had since youth, had become mitral valve regurgitation. And so began my journey to get it fixed.
These posts were originally on yearoftheheart.modblog.com, and were intended to keep others updated on what was going on, as well as keep a handy record of the resources I found. Modblog.com is no longer around. I had not kept copies of these posts locally, but found them on the Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org/index.php). Two posts seem to be gone forever (the Omissions listed in the postings). Many of the links in the posts are no longer available, so they link to the Internet Archive copy instead. A few links to images are not available at all (as noted in the posts).
I hope you find these useful or informative. I’m glad to be on the other side of this adventure. I no longer swim (no more pool), but am back to exercising, and walking, which the doctors tell me is better anyway.
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