A Personal Look at Mitral Valve Prolapse

Around the age of eight years old, I suddenly hit a growth spurt—promptly making me one of the tallest girls in my class. It was around this time that I began experiencing chest pains. Visits to the doctor resulted in the diagnosis of “growing pains.” My family and I were left to assume that it was normal for children who grow fairly rapidly in height in a short period of time, to sometimes suffer these types of pains. Our doctor indicated that other children experience “growing” pains in the legs as well.

Not completely satisfied with the prognosis, my mother and father decided to take me to a specialist at New York Medical Center. The year that I turned nine, I remember sitting in the waiting room with both of my parents, waiting to see some big scary doctor who was going to fiddle with my heart. I was a bit nervous about the appointment at first. But my fears were immediately quelled when I discovered that I would simply be connected to a strange machine called an EKG (electrocardiogram). The results of this test, along with a close listen to my chest revealed that I had a heart murmur. Furthers tests as I got older indicated that I in fact, had mitral valve prolapse.

Mitral valve prolapse is not a life-threatening condition, as we were pleased to discover. Simply put, the condition occurs when the “hinges” of the mitral valve are not working properly. In essence, these hinges are supposed to prevent blood from flowing back to the left atrium of the heart. With mitral valve prolapse (or MVP), some blood would flow back into the atrium from the ventricle, every time my heart would beat. This is what was causing my chest pains. The attacks were often scary for a child who loved to run and play. They frightened my parents to no end for quite some time prior to, and even after the diagnosis.