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Posted by Teri Shelton on April 12, 2002 at 11:59:47:

Hi everybody. My name is Teri and I have never posted a messge before, but I have been following along and reading your stories for a while now, and I thought that it was time to share our story. I am 23 years old and my husband is 24. Last April we had our first child, and the following week I brought my husband to St. Mary's Medical Center in Duluth, MN, for what we thought was pneumonia. He was short of breath and had a bad cough. I brought him to the emergency room where they took one look at his heart rate and did an Echo and an EKG. Then he was sent to the cardiac wing where we were told that he had congestive heart failure, cardiomyopathy and A Fib. His heart rate was 185 at rest and when he stood up it jumped up to 195. Then we were told that it was going to go one of 3 ways: it would get better, stay the same or he would need a heart transplant. I could have died right there on the spot. Well, needless to say, his heart improved and now the only problem we have is the AF. My hsuband has undergone 3 external cardioversions and one internal cardioversion at St Mary's, all unsucessful. He is currently on an array of drugs including Metaprolol, Lanoxin, Zestril, Coumadin and Lopressor (He was also on Amneoderone for a couple months before the internal cardioversion, but has since been taken off that). After this last round of cardioversions, his cardiologist Dr. Nuestel, and his EP Dr. Molaris, have now decided that he should look into having the MAZE done at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. We meet with Dr. Munger of Mayo on the 17th of April to discuss scheduling. My husband would like to wait until fall to have this done as he is a very active person and has a lot of different things going on in the summer. This has been a very bumpy road, and I know that is is not even close to being over, but I just wanted you all to know that after reading about this procedure and reading your stories, I fell more confident that everything is going to be ok. My husband just seems so young to be having these kinds of problems. It is especially hard for him to know that this all happened from a virus. It's kind of funy - the guy has never been sick a day in his life until now. . . .

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