Surgery Time

I imagine my blog is about to turn into an "all of out of town family/friends read to keep up blog". Which, I don't mind, because then I will have more readers. :-) Anyways..

Background info:
Hubby was born with something called Marfan's Syndrome, a genetic disorder. With that comes symptoms/complications such as Mitral Valve Prolapse, Scoliosis, and Pectus Excavatum. When he was in the 3rd grade he had surgery for the pectus excavatum and in 9th grade he had back surgery for the scoliosis. The mitral valve prolapse, however, doctors have been monitoring since he was little.

Fast forward:
Hubby goes to the doctor every 6 months for all of the above and at the beginning of this month his heart did not look like it was supposed to, 20% larger as a matter of fact. So, last Thursday he had a Trans Esophageal Echo (basically a camera down his throat. That confirmed that his mitral valve of his heart is not functioning as it is supposed to be. With that comes three options:
1. Repair the mitral valve with the possibility that Hubby never has to have surgery on it again.
2. Replace the mitral valve with a mechanical valve and never have to have surgery on it again, however, it places hubby on blood thinners for the rest of his life.
3. Replace the mitral valve with a pigs valve and have surgery in another 10-15 years.

Ideally, repairing the valve is the best option and we are at a point that the Doctor thinks he can repair it. Also, the doctor has been monitoring some other things with Hubby's heart so if all is going well with the mitral valve repair then he will also have his Asending Aorta replaced and a pulmonary vein isolation. All of which will help make his heart stronger and function more effectively. So surgery, here we come. An exact date hasn't been made but it is looking like it will be the end of February.

As you can imagine, the idea of my husband having open heart surgery at 24 years old, a year into our marriage, is not the most appealing thing in the world. This is going to be a very trying and stressful time in our lives.

But to end on a positive note, while we are stressed about the surgery, our 2 best friends are moving to Europe for 9 weeks for training for friend's engineering firm. What makes that so awesome is my in laws had unused flier miles, so, they just bought our plane tickets to Europe!!! So January 27th through February 5th we will be in Europe with 2 of our best friends, courtesy of the best in laws!! YAY!!