On Monday, I saw my surgeon who has said that I am definitely going to have to have surgery. He even kindly worded it as 'you have no choice, it is a life saving operation.' It is a very rare type of surgery and I will have two surgeons operating on me. One has only ever been 'involved' with this surgery twice and the other has performed the surgery once.

I am going to have to have a part-transplant and they will be transplanting my pulmonary valve and my pulmonary trunk. To do this, they will have to break my chest bone so after the operation it will be roughly 12 weeks before I can start lifting things and using muscles in my chest. I am having what they call a 'pulmonary homograft' which is where they transplant what I need from someone else. I have another option which is to have a mechanical part instead of a pulmonary homograft. They both have their pros and cons. The biggest con for a pulmonary homograft is that it only really has a life span of 9-15 years, which would mean that I would have to have a second operation and as they rarely do a third operation I would have a mechanical part fitted on the second operation. The biggest con for the mechanical part is that I would have to be on a drug called warfarin which thins your blood (so I don't get blood clots because of the mechanical part.) Warfarin also causes fetal abnormalities and problems with conceiving children.

As I am very young they want to give me a pulmonary homograft first, so I have a chance to have a family (after university and after I have a career and so forth haha) but once I have the second operation I wouldn't be able to conceive my own children.

The operation will be 3-4 hours long and I should be in hospital for 5-8 days.

I have also been told that I will have to be out of school for at least 3 months, so that's a bit of a problem in terms of school. My operation won't be until at least after September (hopefully) so I should be in at the beginning of the school term.

Oh the joys.