Excerpt from Chapter 14 of The Patient's
Guide to Heart Valve Surgery By Adam Pick, Patient and Author - Revised
2008 Edition
In my opinion, the recovery from heart
valve repair and heart valve replacement surgery needs much, much, much more
attention and patient
education.

"Why does Adam say that?" you might
be wondering.

Well... Leading up to my heart valve
surgery, much of the focus was strictly on the surgical process of replacing my
diseased aortic valve (which suffered from stenosis and regurgitation).

The key questions raised during this time
were:

• "Which surgical option should I
  chose?"


• "What type of valve replacement
  should I select?"


• "Who will be my surgeon?"


• "Where will the surgery take
  place?"


• "How much will the surgery cost?"

Needless to say, these are all very important
questions. Yet, as I look back on it, neither my cardiologist or surgeon sat me
down to discuss the experience of open heart surgery recovery.

It is
true that I received some coaching on the "do's and don'ts" of heart valve surgery recovery. (I think I received a
ten-page handout upon hospital discharge.) However, I never received a detailed,
comprehensive set of verbal or written instructions to accelerate my recovery
time.

As a result, my recovery was filled with
many unexpected challenges and pitfalls. My recovery turned into a rollercoaster
- with multiple "ups" and even more "downs".
Like many cardiac surgery patients, I
experienced many thoughts of "What's wrong with me?"
and "Will I ever truly be my old self again?"

In writing my book, I decided to find out if
I was alone in these thoughts. That said, I ran an extensive survey in which I
asked 78 former patients about their heart valve surgery experience. As I learned during this research, most heart valve surgery
patients surveyed suggested that heart valve surgery recovery was "more
difficult than expected". The patients surveyed also
suggested that their cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons could have better
prepared them for their recovery.

This is the key reason I wrote The
Patient's Guide To Heart Valve Surgery. I want to help future patients and
their caregivers avoid all the problems I experienced during recovery.

As you will read in the next few chapters,
there are several, critical steps that you and your support group can take to
minimize or eliminate the potential struggles of cardiac surgery recovery.