Mitral Valve Prolapse with Diastolic Dysfunction

Mitral Valve Prolapse with Diastolic Dysfunction (or Mitral Valve Prolapse with Regurgitation

Yes, this is what I have been diagnosed with. We are not quite sure exactly what this means or what it has in store for me yet.

Let me just tell you the story.......

On my way to work Tuesday morning I wasn't feeling very well, I actually hadn't been since the middle of the night on Saturday. I had just turned on the road to work when I passed my doctor's nurse so I decided to follow her into the clinic parking lot and ask her what she thought of what was going on.

What was going on: I woke up in the middle of the night Saturday with my heart racing and it wouldn't slow down. (I have had these episodes before because of my irregular heart beat.) I didn't sleep anymore that night. The next day it was still happening but I decided it was just because I had a fever with my cold and totally blew it off. Monday it still continued and I blew it off again. I really didn't notice it too much when I was up and about, mostly when I layed down to go to sleep. At this point I have not slept since Friday night. Monday night was bad again and layed awake all night. This brings me to Tuesday.

After talking to Jan she told me I needed to come right into the clinic and be checked out by the doctor. I followed her in and the first thing she did was take my pulse and blood pressure. My pulse was 165 and my blood pressure was 200 over ???. I can't remember exactly. I just know it was sky high. The doctor immediately hooked me up to the EKG to monitor my heart. They decided I needed some medicine to slow down my heart. At this point I had called my father-in-law to let him know what was going on and he came over to the clinic to be with me. They told me I had two choices: 1-Take the medicine orally and wait 45 minutes for it to work or 2-Take the medicine through and IV and get immediate relief. Layne said I should do the IV and I agreed, so away we went back to the EKG so they could monitor my heart while giving me the meds. The craziest, scariest thing I have ever felt in my life. No joking, not 5 seconds after injecting the meds into the IV my heart rate went from 165 to 80. Talk about scary. One second your heart is racing and the next there is nothing. Well, they got my heart rate and blood pressure under control enough they felt like I could leave with medication I have to take every day to control my heart rate. They scheduled me a test called an Echocardiogram for the next day.

Wednesday: The Echocardiogram with bubbles
I went for the echocardiogram with bubbles and learned nothing really. We watched the ultrasound of my heart, very cool. We watched them inject bubbles into my heart during the ultrasound, even cooler. But got no answers this day.

Thursday:
We were told we would have test results, but nothing.

Friday: The Answer
Today we learned I have what is called Mitral Valve Prolapse with Diastolic Dysfunction. That's really all we know. We did Google it to learn what it all means.
www.mayoclinic.com/health/mitral-valve-prolapse/DS00504 Basically on the left side of your heart you have the lower left ventricle and the upper left atrium. Between the two is the Mitral Valve. It's job is to seal the opening between the two while blood is being pumped through your heart. My Mitral Valve does not seal the opening, instead it prolapses into the upper left atrium like a parachute, thus allowing blood to flow back through the valve into the upper left atrium from the lower left ventricle and not pushing it out into the rest of my body. We found many people carry on to live a normal life and never have to be treated. Others have to be medicated the rest of their lives to control it. And some do have to have surgery to repair it. It all depends on how bad it is. I now have to meet with a Cardiologist to decide the next course of treatment. Hopefully I will be seeing him this next week.

Thank you to everyone for your concern and all your help, especially Michelle for watching the kids during my tests. We will keep everyone posted as soon as we know anymore.