At 26, Melody Hickman of Raleigh, North Carolina, was crestfallen. A routine physical detected a problem with her mitral valve. Fixing it required open-heart surgery.
“I knew I would have to be on a heart-lung machine, and the idea of having the incision really bothered me,” she said, noting she often wore V-neck tops. “It was a lot to digest.”
The surgery and recovery went well. Then, 14 years later, the valve needed to be replaced again. That meant a second open-heart surgery. Read more from American Heart Association News.