JimL
November 9th, 2004, 06:58 AM
My first thought this morning was that I wouldn't have any breakfast, which is why I ate seven hospital trays yesterday, trying to build up a reserve. I did take my fears to God, and was reassured that either I would be with Him, if the surgery failed, or I would be with Him if the surgery was successful. So no worries left. I put in a strong request that they not stick any more needles into me until they had first used my existing IV to give me some happy juice, and they obliged me on that. My other request was that they not shave more than they needed to, since I had worked so hard to grow what I have. It was about then that the lights went out.
There are visitors coming into my room, and I think I'm still alive. Morphine button for pain? Oh, yeah, I should press that when I have visitors so that I'm not in pain. But it seems that the morphine put me out immediately, which sort of conflicted with the whole idea of having visitors. I have no memory whatsoever of intubation, nor any throat discomfort.
Sometime, and I'm still not sure if it was three years ago today or tomorrow, they wanted me to sit up in bed, which seemed to be no problem until I did it, and realized that I had indeed had major surgery, and where was that morphine button?
I didn't find VRcom until several months after surgery, so I got a little over excited about some of the minor problems I had to deal with in the ensuing weeks, such as arrhythmias. It was so amazing to find a whole website devoted to the surgery I had just had, a whole group of caring people who had experienced the same things I had, and were still trying to decipher how they got from one side of the mountain to the other.
People still ask me how I'm doing after surgery. I've sometimes told them the truth, but it's pretty obvious they don't want to know any details. So now I usually tell them what they want to hear, which seems to satisfy them: (1) they don't have to get into the details which are probably over their heads, (2) It is possible to have a complete recovery, just in case they should need the same or a similar surgery. Explaining to people the differences between valve surgery and bypass surgery just seems to be a waste of words...
I hope no one minds too much, but I'll probably stick around VRcom for the foreseeable future. I have no significant symptoms at all; I'm still getting used to having a heart that functions like a normal heart, after living with a four-cylinder heart that was only firing on three cylinders for the first 46 years of my life. I'm getting a new cardiologist, not because I really need one, but just in case I do; so I suppose if I do have heart needs, there's no better place to turn for good and fast answers than you people. Once in a while I deceive myself into thinking I know something that will help someone else; sometimes no one corrects me, so maybe I was right. And there is the hearty camaraderie among the mostly normal people here, and the heartfelt camaraderie among the rest of us. So, please rejoice with me at three years, and if anyone wants to come and drink a homebrew with me in celebration today, let me know and I'll send you an address.
There are visitors coming into my room, and I think I'm still alive. Morphine button for pain? Oh, yeah, I should press that when I have visitors so that I'm not in pain. But it seems that the morphine put me out immediately, which sort of conflicted with the whole idea of having visitors. I have no memory whatsoever of intubation, nor any throat discomfort.
Sometime, and I'm still not sure if it was three years ago today or tomorrow, they wanted me to sit up in bed, which seemed to be no problem until I did it, and realized that I had indeed had major surgery, and where was that morphine button?
I didn't find VRcom until several months after surgery, so I got a little over excited about some of the minor problems I had to deal with in the ensuing weeks, such as arrhythmias. It was so amazing to find a whole website devoted to the surgery I had just had, a whole group of caring people who had experienced the same things I had, and were still trying to decipher how they got from one side of the mountain to the other.
People still ask me how I'm doing after surgery. I've sometimes told them the truth, but it's pretty obvious they don't want to know any details. So now I usually tell them what they want to hear, which seems to satisfy them: (1) they don't have to get into the details which are probably over their heads, (2) It is possible to have a complete recovery, just in case they should need the same or a similar surgery. Explaining to people the differences between valve surgery and bypass surgery just seems to be a waste of words...
I hope no one minds too much, but I'll probably stick around VRcom for the foreseeable future. I have no significant symptoms at all; I'm still getting used to having a heart that functions like a normal heart, after living with a four-cylinder heart that was only firing on three cylinders for the first 46 years of my life. I'm getting a new cardiologist, not because I really need one, but just in case I do; so I suppose if I do have heart needs, there's no better place to turn for good and fast answers than you people. Once in a while I deceive myself into thinking I know something that will help someone else; sometimes no one corrects me, so maybe I was right. And there is the hearty camaraderie among the mostly normal people here, and the heartfelt camaraderie among the rest of us. So, please rejoice with me at three years, and if anyone wants to come and drink a homebrew with me in celebration today, let me know and I'll send you an address.