Tundra_Man 

Yes, so far so good. I'm coming up on 4 years since my open heart surgery. The aorta above my valve got stretched out prior to the surgery, and for some reason the surgeon opted not to fix it while he was in there. Now it's starting to slowly enlarge even more. I'm still below the threshold for them to need to go back in and fix it, but they're monitoring it closely. Once it hits a certain point the odds of a sudden rupture (and not coincidentally sudden death) go up exponentially. At that point there's no putting off another OHS. In the meantime, the doctor has me on two different blood pressure meds to try to keep my BP as low as my body will allow to try and slow the enlargement.

I'm also on blood thinners for the rest of my life in order to prevent clots around mechanical valve from my body trying to reject it. Because of this I have to go in for regular blood tests to make sure my warfarin dosage is keeping my blood thin enough to not clot, but not so thin that I bleed out from a minor injury. I've been on the exact same warfarin dosage for 3.5 years, which amazes everyone at the coagulation management office. Apparently most people aren't near as stable as I am and require frequent tweaks to their dosage amounts to keep them in the acceptable range. So I have to say that aspect of it is going extremely well.

Now if I could just drop about 50 pounds I would be in like Flynn. I'm a stress eater and our family has been buried in it the last five years. I need to figure out a less self-destructive way of dealing with stress other than filling my stomach.

Sorry they took your drugs away from you. Kind of a tough place to be in when you feel better when you're actually doing worse, and vice-versa.