How This Started

In about 1993, I changed doctors and started seeing Dr. Robert Havey at Northwestern Medical Associates in Chicago. In one of my early visits, he mentioned that I had a heart murmur and went on to explain that it was from a heart valve that wasn't exactly working properly.

We started a program of monitoring with echocardiograms and stress echocardiograms. These tests use ultrasound to image the heart in much the same way that expectant parents take a look at their unborn child.

It soon emerged that one of the key criteria of how things were going was the size of my heart and the size of my aorta. While many with a bad heart valve have "MVP" or mitral valve prolapse, my issue was on the other side of the heart, at the aortic valve. My condition was known as aortic regurgitation or aortic insufficiency.

In 1994 when we did the first echocardiogram, my aorta was measured at 4.4 centimeters in diameter--apparently well within normal. Over the years, things progressed slowly. Havey told me that eventually I'd need to have the valve replaced and the test would allow us to know when it was time to do so.

Last summer (2007), I wasn't able to do a stress echo (where you exercise on a treadmill before they measure the size of the heart by ultrasound) as I was on crutches trying to heal a bone bruise in my left ankle. But measurements by regular echocardiogram showed the aorta to be 4.9 cm. At this size, it was approaching the range where surgical intervention would be indicated, 5.1-5.5 cm.

Fast forward to this year: I knew I was due for another echocardiogram, but didn't think there was much urgency. After all, we had been monitoring this condition for more than a dozen years and it seemed to progress slowly. When summer rolled around, I knew that I really should get in and get the test done again. As had become our habit, I called Dr. Havey's office to schedule the echo in advance of my meeting with him so that he could report the results to me when we got together. Since I'd been traveling so much this summer, the echo date wound up coming between two trips: Durango, CO the third week of July and a trip to Hawaii scheduled to begin on August 3.

That set up the week just past--details of which I'll put in subsequent posts.