A Sojourn with the Surgeon

I saw my surgeon today. 24 days after open heart surgery. Ah, time flies like the wind (fruit flies like bananas.)

I am recovering well. From the moment I woke up in Yale New Haven hospital my body was plotting how it could get me out of that place. I ignored it’s pleas to just get up and go. There are trees around the hospital… and a cemetery… and a limited access highway. Maybe I could run away and join the gypsies and spend my time dancing on the streets for coins and telling fortunes. Well, telling bad fortunes. Who wants the truth, anyway?

Wait. That’s the hospital in Norwich. The one in New Haven is much more civilized. No hiding in the woods around there. Maybe I can sleep in a museum.

I’ve had a few visits from visiting nurses since I came home. I didn’t spend any time in a nursing home. I had hoped not to. Dr. Darr’s assistant, Eileen, talked to me about it. I explained to her that Kristin was bringing me home and she was apprehensive about taking care of me. She understood, but also wanted to explain the procedure. If I go into a nursing home, it means that my doctor does not think I am ready to be home but no longer needs a hospital. Now, once I am in a nursing home I will need a doctor to release me. I can’t stay for as long as I want like it’s a country club or something. And nursing homes make money by having residents.

I understood that. But I also understood that Kristin was coming 3,000 miles to be a loving daughter to her doting father. I know I can be difficult when I am partially conscious and wholly insane. Mostly drugged. Over-the-top Paranoid. Scandalously Suspicious. Doesn’t-Recognize-my-own-Family Dysfunctional. It’s a family thing. I remember dealing with my mother at the end. Not pretty. But it’s family.

So my blood pressure was a little screwy-dazical last week. I came home from the hospital and was OK for about a week, or so. It happened that a bit after my surgery my heart started fibrillating. It was a trying time. My blood pressure was crazy. It would revolve around values like 98/59 with a blood pressure of 132. Or sometimes 178/142 and BP of 112. Or some other atrocity. 2 hundred something over 1 hundred a lot something with a side of no good? I was enduring something awful.

Then I started to feel feint when I stood up. I saw my cardiologist and he told me that my heart was fibrillating. It’s not uncommon, occurring in about 40% of the cases. I was scheduled to go in, this time to Backus, last Friday. He was going to do some procedure (beware the ‘procedure’) to De-fibrillate my heart, which involves a catheter, an electrode, and an IV. Wake me when it’s over.

Thursday, May 3. Early. AM. I had a date with surgery. 21 days after open heart surgery.

It was bad.

Eep!

So.

I was light headed. I would get up and feel feint. Like I was going to fall down. Just fall over. I wanted to breathe and inhale and get some oxygen into my lungs. Like a deep breath. How sweet. But every time I breathed a deep breath in, I would feel breathless. Like I couldn’t breathe a breath. I just sucked in with my lungs and held it there, a lost breath in a solid marble lung, cold and distant.

So my doctor said; My heart is freaking out! The anterior is screwing with the posterior. I had to take some new medicine and watch what I was doing and make sure it doesn’t screw up or something. And come in for that little procedure next week. Just a little procedure. We will put a catheter into some artery or other and put a heating pad alongside your heart. Then we’ll send a jolt of electricity into your heart while flooding it with a massive dose of blood thinners. You’ll hardly notice. Or care. Or remember.

Sure.

Kristin brought me to the hospital and checked me in. I was feeling better and the signs of fibrillating were dissipating. Gone, actually. Sometime the previous week I woke up and my heart was making normal noises. My blood pressure was acceptable and my pulse was a leisurely taking laps around my rib case. I had more stamina. Feeling feint when I got up was almost a thing of the past.

I came into Backus Hospital on Thursday morning. Kristin brought me. And I checked in. I got my death wish-wrist band and went upstairs to the operating room. Well, the waiting room for the operating room. A nurse helped me change into my Johnnie and put all my valuables into a bag for retrieval later. She loosened my Johnnie (I always tie it behind my back) and glued electrodes onto my chest for an EKG. She velcrow’ed a cuff to my bicep. Doctor mother had her way. I waited. Soon I would feel the propofol and Valium.

She looked at the monitor and thought for a while. “What test are you here for?” she said?

“Well, my heart is fibrillating. He wants to do a procedure to stop it? (They like words like ‘procedure’.)”

“Well, OK. Your heart looks OK to me.”

Dr. Needleman walks in.

“How are you?”

“Hello, Dr. Needleman. I’m fine (honestly!) How are you?”

Niceties were said by all. He exchanged thoughts and insights with the nurses.

“So. Let’s see what we have here?” He looked over some tests, blood pressure, pulse, blood oxygen level, (which is phenomenally high, btw) and said I did not need this procedure. My heart had pretty much healed itself.

Huh?

Let’s get clear here. In about 40% of cases, an aortic catheterization valve replacement results in stress to the heart and fibrillation as a result. Which means my heart is fluttering and the two sides of the THump-thump aren’t Thumping properly. So that’s not surprising. But in a rare number of those cases, the heart figures out how to smooth itself out. The ventricles and the atriums just figure out how to get along. Isn’t that nice?

So. They sent me home. Good news. No electroshock to my heart…! No chemical stimulus to the bunch of muscles that keep my body humming nicely…! Yipee!

Isn’t it nice that my body knows how to take care for itself?

Dr. Needleman looked at my X-ray, BP, Pulse, Oxygen level and asked me why, again, am I in here? When I couldn’t come up with a good answer, he sent me home. Keep taking your meds, and continue to taper off the blood thinner. And I’ll see you in a month. You’re doing phenomenal.

That was last Thursday. Today, Monday, I saw my surgeon, Dr. Darr. The nurse took my vitals, once again doing comfortably (and vitally,) and the doctor came in. Dr. Darr is very pleasant and friendly. The nurse had told me that the BP machine was noisy. It was kvetching about a low battery or something. It wanted to be fed. I told Dr. Darr that we in eastern CT can’t afford all the fancy high tech gadgets they have in New Haven. He smiled and told me to knock it off.

And, more importantly, he told me that I was doing good. And not just ‘good,’ good. I mean, good as in ‘very good.’ He used words like terrific. Fantastic. I knocked it out of the field… And then some. The tests and X-rays showed a heart and lungs very clean and functioning normally. The fibrillation figured out how to fix itself, which is very unusual. Damned if I know what's going on.

That’s OK. You keep the machinery going and I’ll throw you some Paleo diet once in a while. With a vodka in one hand and a scotch in the other to keep my genetic lines happy. I’m 100% recovered!

Ah, my Celtic/Slavic genes.