The process

I realize that, in telling you all the little tidbits of recovery from open-heart surgery, I have failed to share any of  my own reflections about it. Time to start.

I had never considered the possibility that I had heart disease. I had never had a heart attack, I lived a healthy life, and I was uber-active. What could be wrong? The need for a new valve was imagined as a fault in the plumbing, something that would be fixed when the time was right. Apparently the time had been right just about the time I had a stroke in March 2013, so the surgery got pushed into the background. But the ailment didn’t, I discovered.

When the cardiologist was describing the problem to me over a printout of my current heart, I was amazed to see that many of the arteries on is surface were squiggly and narrow. That was plaque, apparently, and it had been there a long time, so it had calcified (hardened) which meant that a stent was out. (A stent is a tube inserted into an artery to open it up. It only works if the plaque is soft and relatively new. Mine wasn’t).

I heard the words Cardio-Arterial Disease for the first time. I had a heart disease! Me! The remedial action is called by-pass. What that means is that the old plugged arteries are ignored; they can’t be fixed.  Instead, veins are stripped out of your own body – the chest, and usually one leg, to make alternate routs for the blood to get to where it needs to go. They gave me a thick pamphlet describing the whole process, with color photos. I read about five pages, and then felt totally overwhelmed with the magnitude of the process and put it away.

The valve replacement was the easy part, it turns out. Bovine tissue is used to make a valve (who knows how?) and that is fitted. It’s good for a decade or more. So, if I live to 95, I’ll need another. And they do this with 95 year olds these days!

The magnitude of my problem began to seep into my brain. This was definitely life threatening. I should have had it last June, but the stroke screwed that up. I guess this is one reason why, instead of a “6 to 8 week wait,” I was called for surgery within two weeks. Very inconvenient, as Beatrix was having her own surgery just 5 days prior to mine! Another story…later.

We settled in at the hospital residence briefly. They called all of us slated for surgery on February 10 to be at the surgery unit doors at 5; 30 the next morning. When we walked into the waiting room, there must have been twenty people sitting around. Many looked very anxious; many others talked in a frenetic way. When the unit doors opened at 5:30, the rush was like those I experienced as a boy at an Eaton’s sale. It was a scramble. Turns out, they had beds assigned for each of us, where we hunkered down to be shaved. “Shaved” means every inch of the front of you, top to bottom, by an efficient and silent Filipina nurse. Then came the wait. Names were called, and gurneys rolled out. Time passed, and my name wasn’t called. I tried to relax, but more anxious. They had pre-warned us that a surgery could be postponed at a moments notice right up until they begin opening your chest!

By one in the afternoon, I was the only person left in the unit. Word came down: either you will be postponed or they will take you as a late surgery with the hour. I watched the clock with rising anxiety. I thought, “what would it be like to go through this tomorrow morning again…or next week?” Every concern of my reflection came rushing back, while I tried to look calm and ready.

It was just after two P.M. when they said, “you are a go,” and began to wheel me out of the unit. I was excited and pleased, AND, I was terrified. I was on the way. I would not be back in the Recovery Room until 8 P.M. that night. More later.