11-25-2025, 04:35 AM
(11-24-2025, 08:55 PM)Quantum12 Wrote: I am 53, I was born with a bad heart valve. At 33 they wanted to replace it. I waited too long. They replaced it and my heart could not handle a new valve. The worst part was they sawed my sternum to get my heart out. It still hurts!My little brother, 45 now, was born with his heart valves the wrong way around.
The less salt the better!
They operated on him as an infant, that was open heart surgery, so i know what the scar looks like(this was back in 1980), and all went well.
The doctors told my mother the operation should last around 17 years and he was prescribed Digoxin, as I recall.
He turned 17 and, sure enough, he had a massive stroke.
We were told to prepare for the worst.
He managed to pull through, but was left with paralysis down the left-hand side and a significant reduction in speech.
At 30, his heart began to fail again, horrible to watch, and he ended up on the transplant list.
Luckily, the NHS managed to source a compatible organ from some poor soul, and he received a transplant.
He’s still doing well 14–15 years on, plodding along with two kids in tow and a pretty normal life aside from the medications and immunosuppressants.
Needs to go down to Manchester every few months for a check-up.
But he's never out of the pub, all the same, always drunk.
"Yet so it is, we see the illiterate bulk of mankind that walk the high-road of plain common sense, and are governed by the dictates of nature, for the most part easy and undisturbed. To them nothing that is familiar appears unaccountable or difficult to comprehend."
