Kevin was treated for mitral valve disease in 2014, having been diagnosed 18 years prior! Here, in the first of three entries, he writes in detail about his experience of diagnosis and living with heart valve disease. In 1996, I visited my GP with a recurrent chest infection. During the course of the physical examination, a heart murmur was detected, and an echocardiogram revealed that I had a leaking mitral valve. The leak was causing ‘trivial’ regurgitation of blood from the heart, and from that moment, I would be subject to annual examination. In fact, my leak was a superb [...]