spillo's home now
spillo's home now
Thanks for all the replies,
It is 1 week post op today. I am doing great. I am upstairs in my home. I sleep however I want. I bend and eat and go to the little generals room whenever I want. I do sweat at night and go from hot to cold in the same minute but this is from anethesia. It happened after my back surgery also.
I have 3 back fractures, back surgeries, herniated discs x4. So my back really hurt after avr. I did have one bad day, day 2 post op that I wanted to swig a bottle of morphine but besides that it was a breeze. The urinary cath removal was the worst but the pain only lasted a few seconds. Most of it was in my head so I got over it within 15 minutes.
I had the brand new Magna Edwards bovine pericardial valve installed. Dr. Cosgrove has done thousands of the Edwards Perimount Aortic valve but I was only his 3rd Magna patient. I am a researcher so it was fitting to get something cutting edge. It has been on the market 2 months. It has a new coating on the ring that the Perimount does not. This reduces calcification sites ( where calcification begins ) up to 95%. Calcification was why I had avr, calcification will most probably be why I will have a second avr so best to slow it down as much as possible. It is expected to last 20-25 yrs.
I had a problem with bleeding in surgery. They closed my up, extubated me in the OR, brought me to the CICU but my chest tubes drained too much. I went back to ER where I was intubated, anethatized and opened up just enough to see a sternal wire had ripped a muscle and I was bleeding internal. A snip of the wire, some more stitches, extubated and sent back to the CICU. This took an extra hour. Of course all my family heaard was " he is having a problem with bleeding and needs to go back to the OR ". I am sure they had it worse than me.
So my H&H which was 15 and 45 pre-op was now 8 and 28 post op. It is probably a little higher now. I was on oxygen for 18 hrs. I do not remember those hours. I was in CICU 24 hrs. The CICU nurses at the Cleveland Clinic are the best in the world. One nurse per 2 patients. If you blink they chart it. If you ask for an ice chip it is there within 20 seconds.
The floors at CCF are busy. The care is excellent but the nurses are overworked. This bleed may have been a blessing in disguise because if I wasn't as tired as I get now I would want to be at work right now and my sternum would never heal.
I am 6 ft. tall with average size hands. My incision is the length of my little finger. It is shorter than a regulation business card. When Cosgrove says minimal invasive surgery, he means it !!!
I am on a beta blocker for one month, a baby aspirin for life. Thats it.
I can honestly say each and every employee I came in contact with from transport to M.D.'s were the nicest anywhere. The patient always comes first. Always.
All in all it was an excellent experience. If you go with family members, stay at the Intercontinental SUITES not the hotel. It is $104 per night. 2 beds and a pull out couch. A microwave, fridge, Kit. sink, coffee. Buy food somewhere else and keep the leftovers in the room. Also, the cafeteria has everything from sushi, starbucks, whole roasted chickens to mcdonalds.
American Idols on. Gotta run !
Spillo
