RBC Levels and Mechanical Heart Valve

Hi @twachter, and welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect! I am so glad you came here to visit with others about your post-surgery healing. You have to be stressed not being able to find a clear answer to your concerns.

First, understand I am absolutely not a medically trained person. I am a Mayo Clinic MN patient who is navigating my own health journey. I tried to search for “ Reticulocyte Haptoglobin” from the home page and didn’t find other discussions. There are some member comments including them individually, and you may want to try searching yourself (if you haven’t already).

I checked what Mayo Clinic Labs has to say about these tests and it sounds like it is reasonable to expect you learn more by retesting after a couple weeks following initiation of treatment. I guess if it were me, I would go back to my PCP who has identified a concern and ordered your treatment. It will help her to know what your cardiologist told you and ask what she recommends. In the meantime, definitely continue reporting to your cardiologist how recovery is going.

Other members may have more personal experience and expertise.

How are you feeling? Are you taking the iron and B12 your PCP recommended, and do you have a plan to follow up with her?

Hi! Thank you so much for the reply. I am taking the B-12 and Iron per the PCP advice. I will go back in Sept to get retested to see if they have helped.

It’s frustrating because it’s been hard enough adjusting to a mechanical valve and then to have conflicting thoughts from my PCP and local cardiologist makes it hard to really know what’s going on.

I’ve reached out to my Mayo surgeon, but have gotten no reply….

Contacting your surgeon sounds like a great idea, @twachter .

Just having this surgery is not a good time to deal with something unknown like this. I imagine you are wanting to hear consistency and affirmation from your doctors. I am learning just how much in medicine is not black and white, and those lessons never seem to be at moments when I would choose to deal with them. Hang in there!

Please do come back and let me know what your surgeon tells you. What about adjusting to your new valve is giving you the most problem right now?

Hi! The hardest part of adjusting to the mechanical valve has been the constant thumping of the valve itself, very hard and loud. It’s like someone is constantly tapping on my chest. It makes it so very hard to sleep. Plus my heart rate is much higher than it was before the surgery and that is hard as well to get used to. And lastly, I seem to have what I would call a heat intolerance since the surgery. I am constantly sweating and have a hard time sleeping from that as well.

Hi @twatcher, getting used to the noise of the mechanical valve is a common adjustment for many members on Connect.

@purpleturtle, @partyon and @martinkennot all shared the same experiences with a valve they could hear after surgery in the following discussion:

"Mechanical heart valve noise: Do you and others hear it?"
- https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mechanical-valve-1

@twatcher, did your surgeon say the thumping sound and feeling would go away over time or is it a 'new normal' you need to adjust to? Have you had a chance to discuss the heat intolerance change as well?

Hello. From what I’ve been told, it’s my new normal. In all honesty, had I known the effect the clicking/thumping and pounding would have on my daily quality of life, I think I may have gone with a tissue valve instead of the mechanical. I am a small person, with very little “padding” for cushioning the feel and sound and I think that’s part of why it feels so prominent for me.

I see the doctor in a couple of weeks and will address my heat intolerance issue. Praying they can give me some answers , as that is probably the hardest to deal with.

Thanks for the tag @JustinMcClanahan
My comments were written almost a year after my surgery and now I am almost another year on. I am coming up to my second re-birthday. I'd like to share my thoughts on my journey thus far.
Context: I had OHS, aortic graft, AVR, for a 6.5cm aortic aneurysm and a full length aortic dissection. The surgery was nine hours and I woke up three days later in ICU.
Post-surgery it appeared my liver was compromised because of the surgery - perhaps the heart/lung bypass messed with it, or medications or fluids used in the bypass. Surgeons would not approve my discharge until my liver function improved. Upon discharge I was given iron supplements to improve LFT levels. And it did improve with normal diet.
At the bed side in the ER, I was given that choice : 10 years for the organic valve, and 20 or more for the mechanical, with two caveats : the mechanical would make a noise and I would require blood thinners for life. My decision (and not to be taken as advice to follow since your situation, history, physiology and pathology is most-definitely different to mine) was : heck no - I don't want to go through this again in 10 years.
At one year, and still in the "why me?" phase, I sought answers to questions and shared my observation of my valve. Now another year on I would consider that my valve is settled, barely has a noise in daily life, yet at night can beat so much it is annoying. That's it... annoying. Like I kicked my toe two days ago and it's still annoying.
I had an OHS and learned to sleep on my back. Hard to learn but now I can do that without even thinking about it. On my side, my heart moves in my chest and feels a little awkward. On my back I get a little sweaty because of the size of the contact with the bed - it's simply a bigger area with less airflow.
But my valve... I can feel it and if I focus on it then it can be loud.
But it is part of my new life.
It is part of me.
It is me.
It doesn't define me or who I am. It saved my life. We have a relationship.
It tells me if my heart skips a beat. It lets me know if there is anything irregular.
I survived through science fiction; a thing that was impossible in my youth or the generation before me. That, or I was blessed by a miracle and God chose me to remain here to fulfill my purpose.
Great hands saved my life on that table two years ago, many more held me up when I was down, but one pair of hands drove me to the hospital that night with a stubborness more stubborn than my own. She is my angel.

I got my mechanical heart valve 20 years ago and I have the thumping sound. I have gotten use to it over the years and I sleep on my left side/ear which helps.

Thank you for your comments. It has indeed been a journey and I realize this is probably my new norm.

Thank you for the reply. My left side used to be the dominant side I slept on, now it’s the hardest side to sleep on due to the loud and strong pounding of the valve doing its thing. So I’m learning to sleep on my right and back sides. I hope, like you, that in time I will get used
the mechanical valve.