Open-heart surgery is brutal,
invasive and incredibly traumatic to the human body. It begins with the
splitting of your sternum with a bone saw and continued with the cutting out of
your body in various places – your chest and your legs, usable veins which will
become by-pass channels for the blood your heart needs to survive. Calcified
valves are removed and replaced with bovine issue, pig tissue or a mechanical device,
which will assure blood is pumped regularly through your heart muscle so that
it can live and work.
This is a long slow process,
which can take up to six hours, utilizing the talents and skills of a whole
team, of crack surgeons to accomplish the task. Their work makes the
intricacies of a football team at work, or a hockey team getting down ice to
score look like the clumsy jockeying of young boys.
This was my life on February
10, 2014, starting at 1400 hours – 2 in the afternoon for those not familiar
with hospital time. I began to cough and choke and bring a breathing tube
sometime after in ICU, where I was sure they were trying to tear out my throat.
My hours in ICU are very foggy, and filled with strange pain, not only in my
chest, but also all along the inside of my left leg. Later, I learned that was
the side of the “borrowed” veins, from groin to knee on the inside of my left
leg. All my exercise had made these very fit veins to become by-pass channels
for blood around my heart. Three by-pass channels – initially they though four,
but economically cut it down to three.
I arrived on the cardiac unit
limp, exhausted, still quite drugged, and glad to be alive. They told me to
take it easy, that I would start to feel better soon. I believed them. HA!
The very next morning a pert
nurse arrived – after a not-very-palatable breakfast – with a walker. “C’mon,”
she said, “you’re going for a walk!” ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND! A WALK! I’VE
JUST HAD MAJOR SURGERY, I NEED REST! If I didn’t actually say this, this is
what rang through my head. There must be some mistake, surely you mean someone
else, it couldn’t be me in the shape I’m in.
She showed me the clever
technique for exiting a bed with a split sternum, put slippers on my fit, and
pointed me the door. After I right turn at the end of my unit, I entered what
they called The Healing Garden, a stone, wood and flower structure built by the
Sikh community in honour of their founder, for the use of heart patients. It
has a smooth stone floor, where walkers never catch, and many benches and
chairs spread around – usually filled with sleeping staff or those eating lunch.
I only ever once sat down, and all that was available for me was a hard bench.
A steadfastly fixated black woman, with her feet on another chair, was eating
her lunch. She looked fierce, and I was intimidated from disturbing her.
The walk through the healing
garden became my regular route. Three or four times a day. It wasn’t difficult –
300 yards at the most – but then I was on pain medication the whole time. This
exercise prepared me for what the surgeon had said before the operation. “After
this surgery, walking is your best friend.” I was being introduced to my new
life.
I was there for 7 days, after
which I came home, with no pain medication, or so I thought. The next chapter
started with a bang!
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