Back in mid-April [2018] I fell asleep one Monday evening and awoke the following Thursday with two veins missing, one from each leg, a gigantic vacuum pump bandage on my chest, wires coming from all over my torso running into a little transmitter resting on my stomach, four new connections among my coronary arteries and the most dizzying and confusing array of random thoughts bouncing around my head. I really did feel as if I’d just returned from a journey to another galaxy.
Starship Recovery
At the risk of appearing overly melodramatic, preparation for open heart surgery really does place you at death’s door before it can take place. Your brain and body are so heavily sedated as to appear to have ceased all function. Your heart is quite literally stopped. You are kept alive by a machine that continues to circulate the flow of blood and oxygen to your body for you.
Once this near death level of sedation has been achieved, your surgeon and his team crack open your chest and then, using the veins harvested from your legs, set about rerouting your coronary arteries. Hours later your heart, now beating once again on its own, you’re wheeled into an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where your return to the real world is carefully monitored.
Many people retain memories of some or most of their time spent in an ICU. I do not, save for that brief moment I first saw Brodie and Jon and asked if I had wings or horns. Having determined I was still alive I fell back asleep and don’t recall anything until midday Thursday of that week.
I was floating down a corridor on a magic mattress; I really have no memory of there being anyone else around me including the porter/orderly who must have been steering the gurney I was on. I saw a sign that said, “Five South Coronary Recovery.” I remember wondering what I was doing there.
At the journey’s end, a flock of doves came and transferred me to a bed, sorted me, my bed clothes, wires and tubes, and then propped me up as to receive visitors. It was a good thing they did because no sooner had they finished, as if out of nowhere, Jon and Brodie appeared.
A short time later Jonny and I sat down at the edge of a sliding drapery that made up the outside wall of my “room” having my first post-op meal. A photo was taken, I drank my lunch, and went back to bed.
So began my return to the real world.
When you return to consciousness following open heart surgery, you’re beginning the process of rebooting not only your mind, but your body as well. Among the startling discoveries you’ll make are not only were you sedated but the trillions of little microbial creatures lining your digestive track were as well, and not all of them return to work at the same time.
A short time later Jonny and I sat down at the edge of sliding drapery that made up the outside wall of my “room” having my first post-op meal. A photo was taken, I drank my lunch, and went back to bed.
Neither does your brain. Some things are as clear as day to you, others not nearly so much. Names, dates, times, places are a blur for days, even weeks. Even now some twenty three weeks later, I have strong memories of things that simply did not happen.
The very first thing they tell you in the recovery ward is, “Push, don’t PULL!” when attempting to sit up or stand, and if you do forget and pull with either of your arms and hear a loud cracking sound from the center of your chest, be still and wait to be rushed back into surgery.
My physical recovery proceeded rapidly and I was released after five days with very specific instructions:
No showers, sponge baths only.
No driving for six weeks.
No riding in the front seat of cars during that same period.
Always hold a pillow to your chest while traveling—I had wonderfully warm relationship with one of Sheila Chree’s sofa cushions, Pillow Buddy.
And finally, you must eat a “temporary” diet that would have led a rabbit to suicide. In fact, when Jon first heard the dietary restrictions, he told the counselor, “If that’s what he has to eat for the rest of his life, I may as well go out and start digging a grave for him now.”
As a parting shot, on top of all these other things, you’re told to expect to experience unexpected emotional outbursts, which I did frequently. One minute you’re laughing at the TV, which isn’t even on, and the next you’re yelling at nonexistent kids to get off of your lawn.
I made the most of the situation as best I could, referring to Jon as Hoke every time we went anywhere by car. Of course that made me Miss Daisy.
My first four days back in the real world, i.e. the Chree townhouse, were going well, each day I did a bit more than the day before. Then on day five, I began having serious trouble catching my breath. Late that afternoon I got up from a nap to go to the bathroom, halfway there my vision started to close down like the iris of a camera and my hearing began to fade.
“Jonny!” I yelled as loudly as I could, later he would tell me he could barely hear me calling, nevertheless he bounded up the stairs and managed to catch me just before I hit the floor.
We rushed back to Hamilton General where I spent another four days in the coronary recovery ward. Tests showed my blood hemoglobin levels were dangerously low. It was determined I had internal gastrointestinal bleeding.
One day they shoved a great long snake of a tube down my throat looking for the leak. Two days later after finding nothing topside and following a night of “cleansing” they shoved another tube up my arse. This particular exam was unlike any colonoscopy I’d had before. I had to remain awake and conscious for the whole thing.
I was, however, given a mild sedative and managed a lively conversation with the doctors and nurses throughout the procedure. I remember one of them said something about backseat probing.
Five pints of blood and four days later, I was turned back out on the streets and told in order to prevent further GI bleeding not to take any over the counter pain meds, other than Tylenol, which I can’t take anyway.
Jon and I moved into our new Hamilton, Ontario home. With me laid up, it meant he and his stepdad Al had to drive back to Sudbury…
Following that and in the middle of my initial recovery period, Jon and I moved into our new Hamilton, Ontario home. With me laid up, it meant he and his stepdad Al had to drive back to Sudbury, rent a truck, pack up, and clean up the apartment we’d been living in for the past two years. I remained at Casa Chree with Brodie and his mom.
When Jonny and Al returned, all I could do was sit idly by in the front room of our new, semi-detached 1886 townhouse with Gwen, Jon’s mom, and watch as all our stuff was hauled in. This last bit will be hilariously entertaining for my previous partner John, who during our time together had to manage all three of our relocations by himself as I was always working elsewhere.
My record remains intact.
As spring rolled into summer I began to regain my strength. Not only the level of vitality I had prior to my surgery but, as I was told, a sense of vigor I hadn’t experienced in decades.
“You’ll feel like you did twenty years ago,” Dr. Lemy my cardiac surgeon said during one of his ward visits, which, by the way, is why I now list my age as 47.
All I could do was sit idly by in the front room of our new, semi-detached 1886 townhouse with Gwen, Jon’s mom…
And sure enough I did, I do. With each passing week my daily walks not only became longer and longer, but my pace quickened to a rate I hadn’t experienced for years. The breathlessness and chest pains of the past six months were gone, and best of all, so was my nitro inhaler.
By mid-June, many of the restrictions were being lifted. I was told I could resume “normal” activity. What they forgot to tell me was that as I returned to doing things like lifting bags of groceries from Costco—an occupational hazard when you’re married to a super heavyweight powerlifter—I would be straining muscles and ligaments inflamed by the surgery.
Shortly after posting Part 3 of this series I began experiencing extremely painful stabbing pains in my rib cage. The pain was so intense it hampered the use of my right arm to the point where I couldn’t even type and I wasn’t allowed to use over the counter pain meds. This went on for weeks, but thankfully has now passed. I can even sneeze once again without letting out a blood curdling scream.
Even as the pain was lessening, however, the cycle of emotional upheavals returned. Currently, I owe about $65,000 CA for my surgery and various hospital support services. Jon and I have been exhaustively researching various financial support and aid programs and applying for assistance everywhere we can think of to no avail.
Covering these costs is another story unto itself and I’ll cover that in the next installment of the Cardiac Chronicles.
Edited by
Kenneth Larsen
Next week: The Cardiac Chronicles Part 5, Brother Can You Spare A Bypass Operation
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