You Gotta Have Heart

Wednesday, September 30

Well, I had my “procedure”. Why I use that word instead of “major operation” reflects the skill and smooth transitions that I made from operating room to recovery to ICU to the cardiac care unit.

Like the doctor’s said, they took an artery from under my left pectoral muscle and redirected it to the left ventricle of my heart. There was no need to graft or redirect any other vessels.

My heart was stopped for about an hour. They wanted to make sure that my right atrium had sufficient blood supply. Apparently, there were some marks on the right ventricle which could have appeared as a result of lack of blood. However, when the doctors took the clamps off the arteries, the right atrium appeared to look quite healthy.

I was pretty fortunate not to have had more than superficial damage to the heart. Around the areas of the occluded portion of the left coronary artery, there was some surface scarring, but not too thick. Yes, I did have an infarction, a “heart attack” — but I don’t know for sure when that happened. I do know that there was enough blood redirected through the right coronary artery to really minimize any damage to the heart muscle and to promote healing of some damage that did occur.

Recovery has been quite painful. And I don’t know what gets into these physical therapists; mine was absolutely brutal. I know he needed to have me walk, but the way I was feeling, I didn’t need to make a full circuit around the central desk on the floor! Outside of that, I have pain in around my chest, my back, and my shoulders, primarily.

Most of the pain seems to be muscle pain. I’ve been successful in avoiding pulling on the sternum — which was the “access” point to my heart once they sawed it open...! And Mount Sinai has been pretty good about pain management. Today, Wednesday, I was in horrible pain in the morning; I had not kept up with the meds, and my roommate had the television on all night, keeping me awake. Well, I slept some this afternoon, and I’ll probably fall right off when I go to bed.

One of the main bothers has been the amount of mucous accumulating in my throat. I am unable to get it out, and it builds up until I finally am able to expel it. My lung capacity is fairly low right now, because the lungs collapse and don’t fully reinflate for a while. And it hurts to cough!

In fact, it was hurting when I made any motion with my body. I expected that and was somewhat prepared for it, but it was still a bit more pain than I thought I would have at this point. Also, the body’s reaction to the major, big-time surgery that I had is as extreme as the surgery itself. Wrenching the sternum apart and spreading the rib cage open is pretty serious stuff!

With that, I wish you Sweet Dreams and a Good night!