Has anyone had heart valve replacement?

Hi, Wenred, and welcome to EmpowHer! Thank you so much for your question.

Wow, I'm so sorry you had a brain aneurysm, but so glad that it went well and that you are OK. That must have been a bit frightening, to go in for one thing and find out you need brain surgery! Are you nearly recovered from it?

We have some good information for you on valve replacement surgery on EmpowHer. This talks about mitral valve replacement:

https://www.empowher.com/media/reference/mitral-valve-replacement

And these videos explores aortic and mitral valve replacement:

https://www.empowher.com/media/video/video-dr-aklog-aortic-valve-replacement-what-are-valve-options

https://www.empowher.com/media/video/video-dr-aklog-mitral-valve-disease-treatments-what-are-they

Here's a page from St. Jude Hospital on heart valve replacement surgery. Please note the links down the side of the page on What You Can Expect (Before, During and After Surgery), Complications and Risks, and Frequently Asked Questions. It may give you some good ideas of things you'll want to ask your doctor about tomorrow.

What has your doctor told you to expect in terms of recovery time and expectations?

This page from the National Institutes of Health actually has a tutorial on heart valve replacement. You can click on any of three options and even see a video-like presentation with diagrams:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tutorials/heartvalvereplacement/htm/index.htm

And here is the Mayo Clinic's page on heart valve replacement; there are tabs across the top that you can click on for Treatment, Clinical Trials and Patient Stories:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/heart-valve-surgery/

Do you know which valve is being replaced? And which kind of surgery your doctor is recommending? This explains some of the different types:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/heart-valve-surgery/types.html

And you may like reading this blog, written by a man named Adam who has had double heart valve surgery and who writes about it (as well as answering questions from his readers):

http://www.heart-valve-surgery.com/heart-surgery-blog/

And this page tells you about a book called "The Patient's Guide to Heart Valve Surgery". Be sure to scroll down to the bottom, they have some informative links there.

Does this help a little? Perhaps it gives you some more information before you see your doctor. I hope that readers who have had this surgery will write and tell us about their experience, and any advice that they've had.