Trouble breathing

I am 33 years old and just had open heart surgery Dec1 2006.  I had my aortic valve replaced with a pig valve, and I had an aneurysm in my aorta repaired with a fake material...kinda like corderoy  from what I hear.  After my surgery, I started to have atrial fribulation for awhile but that ended with increase of medication.  Now, I am completely off all medication and have been for awhile.  However, lately I am getting very uncomfortable dizzie spells.  I have gotten them in the past prior to my surgery, but once every blue moon.  For the last 3 months, I am getting them 2 or 3 times a week .   I feel a pressure in my head and my vision is completely blurred and moves sometimes, and then I feel like I am going to black out.  It only last a few minutes.  But also in the last month I feel like my lungs hurt from trouble breathing at night.  My muscles are sore, I feel tired alot, and I have a pressure soarness in my throat.  I went into my cardiologist about a month ago, he said everything looked fine.  I am not sure I feel comfortable with that, because he almost told me to get lost when my anuerysm was ready to rupture.  He thought it was my anxiety and told me not to worry and was not going to run any tests.  I can't say I completely hold that against him, because I don't always explain things right.  My best friend is an RN and she said that is common to have miscommunication between doctors and patients.  So she flew down from Maryland to go in with me.  She insisted that he take a look at some tests that were sent to him from an emergency room I had gone to a few days prior and run my echo.  He did.....I was in surgery in 3 weeks.

I am heading into my regular physician today to have them do blood work and tell him what is going on.  I am just not sure what it could be and hope that it doesn't have anything to do with my heart.    Do you have any suggestions?  I am having my cholesterol tested today.  My question would be, what is high cholesterol for someone with my condition?

[mrwjd]

I hope you are still in touch with the forum.  Yours is the first post I have seen that copies my symptoms at 3 months--everything great, super recovery, only--constantly short of breath (sometimes my chest hurts from the effort, altho' my O2 saturation is normal), dizziness and blurred vision when I stand up,

Today I learned that my total cholesterol (never over 175 in my life--or either of my parents' lives!--is 237.  Going into surgery, it was 171.

I would so like to know what you found out.