The catherization procedure is complete. This allowed the doctors to determine the aortic valve is severely narrowed. Barb is going to need a new valve. Also, they measured the pressure inside the heart. It is much higher than normal. The heart can not pump the blood out due to the narrowing of the valve. (The aortic valve is the last valve on the way out of the heart.). So, Barb's heart is weakened by trying so hard to pump the blood through too small an opening.

The doctors are ordering some additional meds to help stabilize her heart and need to see how it goes before we decide to go back to Texas, or if the valve replacement has to be done in Columbia. They tell me the procedure required 5 or 6 days recovery in the hospital plus at least a week at home, so it would be better to do the valve replacement near home if possible.

The docs also said this narrowing would have been a gradual thing over the last 20 or 30 years.

I find it VERY ODD that her proactive Echo cardiogram, Xrays and blood tests would turn up nothing from last November.