What would happen if...

[Jessica Marie]

Scott-- Yes I don't remember the first couple days from the morphine, I slept most of the time also. I go to a childrens hospital so I always get pillows in the shape of a dogs head that random people see for us. Haha that's cute what your children do! They definitely care about you! I am the complete opposite I am the patient and my parents are the pillow fetches!

 

[SB42]

haha, and I would do the same for my children...how blessed are you! :smile2:

 

[LeakyUK]

Many people talk about sips of water, or licking an ice cube after coming round. I had no recollection of the passage of time but had food provided in ICU several times, which my system disapproved of. I eventually got the message and fasted for 24 hours.

As for Flu, I had the flu jab, and my wife had one at the supermarket! Since then I have had a truly miserable cough and finally required antibiotics as it became a chest infection - the message is to get any possible infection checked ASAP.

 

[Jessica Marie]

Scott-- yes, I think we are all very blessed

LeakyUK-- I only wanted ice chips after my last surgery. I didn't even want to eat food but it got to the point that I wasn't eating and my dad would keep feeding me McDonalds chicken nuggets even though I would tell him I didn't want anything! lol!
And do you mean the flu shot? My mom mentioned me getting it but my dad doesn't think I should for some reason. He is worried that it will turn out to not be good for me. I remember asking my cardiologist about it but I can't remember what he said so that probably means he didn't think I should since I still don't have it. A part of me thinks I should have it but the other part of me doesn't fully trust it.

 

[normofthenorth]

Scott, I think you probably have the chest-spasm traumas in the right order, at least on average: cough, sneeze, vomit. Most of us suffer through intentional and accidental/spontaneous coughs in the immediate post-op period, and try like mad to avoid sneezing, which is generally even more explosive and potentially painful.

In my 1+ years on this forum, I've only heard of TWO patients who actually broke the stainless-steel wires that most of us get to hold our sternum halves together, and they BOTH did it from vomiting -- at least one of them after drinking too much. Sneezing is nasty, but I haven't read about anybody breaking anything from it.

There are various drugs that can help avoid each of those three kinds of spasms, and I suspect that even we relatively drug-shy folks should consider reaching for them to avoid too much stress to those wires, and our early sternum healing. (Me, I developed a nasty cough post-op, and ordinary cough suppressants wouldn't suppress it, so I got a prescription for a codeine cough syrup that got rid of it properly. My first sneeze surprised me somewhere around 5 weeks post-op [my "Norm's story. . ." blog thread remembers the timing better than I do!], and by then it wasn't too traumatic.)