the Operation

Well, here we are, the day before the big day.   There is one more test this morning, some kind of sonogram-ish thing to check the condition of my cardioid arteries, and I am good to go.

In the evening the barber shows up for my full body shave.  He was a funny little dude that looked exactly like Mr Bean in those BBC comedies.  He shaved my chest, then my arms and armpits.  So far, great!  The staff is constantly plastering me with these little plastic stickers with snaps on ’em to which they attach electrodes for their magic heartbeat readings.  When they’re done, the nurses just rip ’em off my hairy old man arms and shoulders and chest, and it hurts, and it’s one of the ongoing small humiliations of the whole process, so taking the pain out of that process is just dandy by me.

But then he shaves my legs, and even my feet and big toe hair (I ain’t no f—ing Hobbit for chrissakes!), and finally, he shaves the pubes.  Maybe this is old hat for some of you, but this was a new one on me.   Oddly, he does NOT shave my back, or head.  In his halting English the Sunday staff doctor said these are not “possible infection points” so they don’t shave ’em. Doesn’t quite make sense, but that’s what they did.   This was one of those many times when I really missed sharing a spoken language with all the busy people surrounding me.  Finally, Mr Bean gave me an excellent old-school straight-razor shave, so I was feeling like a million dollars … until the next event …

For our final humiliation of the pre-op, nursey shows up with an evil-looking six inch long enema tube, the very thought of which reduced me to quivering jello..  In fact I just couldn’t let her do it.   (“You must Mr John, for the defecation!“).   Eventually she left me in the bathroom with the device to “work it out for myself” so to speak (ha,ha), which I more or less did.

After THAT excitement I slept pretty well, and managed to wake up and watch my usual 4AM NBA game and go back to sleep, and then it was Monday morning.

About the actual main event , I have not much to report.  Around 11AM nursey came in, told me to roll over and jammed a BIG ole needle in my butt, “for the relaxation“, and that was pretty much all I know about what happened till until Tuesday afternoon.   I sort of remember looking around the room, deciding whether to take my glasses (I didn’t), but I don’t even remember wheeling down the  hallway.

Tech Talk

Here is Dr Cicek’s email to Janet, forwarded by Janet to Martha, and by Martha to me:

I performed mitral valve repair (sliding annuloplasty, quadrangular resection, chordal transfer and insertion of Duran annuloplasty ring), CABG (LIMA to LAD), and  RF ablation for A Fib. Operation went well and he came off pump easily with a competent mitral valve (no residual regurgitation, no stenosis) and normal sinus rhythm. He is in the CTICU now, wake-up will be extubated tomorrow am.

• the mitral valve repair has been well discussed.   No, I have no idea what all the techno-ese means, any of you smarties have a clue, feel free to comment.
• CABG = coronary artery bypass graft surgery.  This is the one we didn’t expect, the one for which they did the painful catheterization.  LIMA to LAD, no idea what that’s about.
• the RF ablation I find very interesting.   I have been having a symptom called atrial fibrillation for at least the last couple of years.  Before I had my big wake-up call last November I noticed it, but didn’t think much of it, it was just “what I did”.   Since then it has been my constant reminder that I was fucked up and needed fixin’.  Still don’t quite understand the procedure, but the idea is that they are getting the upper chamber (atrium) back in rhythm as long as they’re in there.
• Stenosis means narrowing.
• Just looked up extubation, means duh, taking the tubes out!

A couple of things I’ve found out since from Dr. C:

• The valve problem was congenital and degenerative – a fancy way of saying I was born with it and it was getting worse.
• The clogged artery was lifestyle-related.  All those chicken-fried steaks and gravy finally coming home to roost, if I may mangle a metaphor.
• One hears of double/triple/quadripule bypasses, so how were the rest of my arteries?  Answer just fucking great!  (actually, Dr. Cicek doesn’t talk like that, but he confirmed the idea that everything else was in good shape)

So in some kind of moral accounting, I’m off the hook for the first problem – just the hand god dealt me – but on the hook for the second – I did it to myself.  We haven’t yet had the What does this mean to the rest of my life? talk yet.

Waking up

The moment we ALL have been waiting for!  Somewhere Tuesday afternoon I sort of gained some sort of consciousness.

My first internal question of course is “did they do it? am I back?”   And since I seemed to have a big-ass bandage running down my chest I deduced that I was indeed back, and today was the first day of the rest of my life and all that stuff.

The first external event is they tilt me up and make me cough to clear the crap out of my lungs, which surprise, hurts like hell.   In fact,  the annoying theme of the next two days was “cough please”.  It hurt every f—ing time, but that’s life in rehab.

While I was out they had impaled me with every possible medical contrivance that they might need.  Days later I was still discovering new tricks buried under my skin.

I had the usual little needle thing on the back of my hand,  I had another on my wrist and I had the mothership of little needle things planted in my neck (as seen in my current Facebook pic.  They were using that sucker all the time, putting stuff in, taking blood out, hitting me up with more painkiller for the mandatory coughing.  I didn’t realize what a serious little piece of work it was until they took it out, it turns out it was actually stitched in.  Come to think of it, that was probably why they needed to check my carotid artery before the big show, to make sure it was up to the task.

The next Sunday, six days later, there is still some kind of little meter thingie stitched into my abdomen.

They kept me in ICU till Wednesday evening – they  brought me a TV, and good ole Asli even went back to my room and retrieved my glasses and the book I’m reading.

Back to the Room

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and now Sunday.   They are all kind of running together.   Every day I feel better, I am doing an e.z. version of my Tai Chi form that I think is helping. Every day they take a little blood, but other than that it’s do the blood pressure thing every few hours, take a few pills and wait for the next meal.

Dr C said that if I was Turkish and had a home to go to he would have discharged me already.  Not sure how this relates to the unit stitched into my belly – would he have removed it or sent me home with it.  But as he points out, I probably have more amenities here than at the hotel room (and as I point out, the hotel will be $140/night), and no one seems to be in any big hurry.

They really have taken very, very good care of me here.   Except for the language issue – I am a curious cat and would have a million questions about everything if only someone could understand – I couldn’t be happier about my decision to come here.

I seriously need to take a poop.  Has not happened since the op.   TMI, I know, I know… but we know how I fear the enema, so I am working hard on a peaceful solution to this knotty issue so it does not escalate to that stage.