Dody raises a number of good points.
Seem we have three here, my having mitral valve repair in November 2007 and an Maze. The recovery was uneventful for me, and while I was in intensive care for five days the nurses took great care of me and I had only minimum discomfort...mostly just tired.
My leaky mitral valve caused my left atrial to enlarge to 5.3 cm and was the driving factor for repairing the valve, before the chamber was enlarged further. Any size over 5 cm, I understand, is problematic as far as curing AFig is concerned, and is clearly the case for me.
Best I know, if you blood pressure is normal or controlled to normal and you have good valves the heart should not be under any enlargement stress...but I am not sure on this point.
I have had a similar situation except my surgery/recovery was not a breeze. Please read my post from yesterday "flecainide for a-fib and a-flutter."
Why did you have the MAZE - were you having a-fib? Perhaps that is why you had the stroke - sometimes a-fib and a-flutter are silent (especially if your rate is controlled with a beta blocker).
You might look into whether or not you are having a-fib. Sometimes it is hard for them to catch on the halter monitors. The recordable event monitors that you call in do not automatically detect a-fib/a-flutter - please be aware of that. You need a cardionet wireless - that is what picked mine up this week (9 months post op). Otherwise they were considering me a-fib free and the surgery a success.
Was your atria enlarged before (pre and post op)? Mine was due to 39 years of severe mitral regurgitation - that's what caused the arrhythmias. Otherwise I felt great and could do anything - very athletic. My docs spent my entire life watching out for congestive heart failure and they missed all the warning signs for a-fib. Now I am stuck with many complicated arrhythmias even post op. My surgeons at CCF informed me that sometimes the atria does not go back to normal size if it has been enlarged for a long period.
Also there can be a big difference in echo interpretation depending on the tech that performs the echo and the physician reading it. I had echos every six months my adult life and they were all different, sometimes drastically different but the basic diagnosis was the same.