Darren's Posts

It's been a week since my last post. 3 days after the ablation I woke up feeling different. A Good Different. I am now feeling like myself - for the 1st time since 2010! I have energy, I feel like kicking the stars. I'm no longer weeping around feeling blue. It's been a huge journey. From my new perspective I can clearly see that my depression over the past 2 years wasn't in my head. It was my heart not functioning properly. I'm firing on all 8 cylinders and it feels good! Some might think that my past posts were downers or maybe even graphic. I'm fine with that. It is what it is. A journey to reflect on. A journey that shows how heart operations affect you emotionally and physically. No longer will I admit that it was my fault that my emotional state was my own doing. It's like having a 350 small block have 2 spark plugs removed and then blaming the driver for not winning races. I can only hope that I get to enjoy this feeling for several years before dealing with the fact that everyday this valve is getting closer to replacement. When that is nobody knows. But if I can have some years of enjoyment and good health, I'll deal with the valve later. Thank you Dr. Parkash for giving me back my life! JD

Therapy. Back home this afternoon after ablation surgery yesterday in Halifax. I was very worked up about this procedure but resigned myself to rise above it and take it head on. So at pre-op I was met by a great bunch of nurses and they reviewed what they intended on doing that day and what to expect tomorrow. Then I was asked into a room to sign the permission forms with a young female doctor that couldn't speak English well enough for me to understand. Not that she wasn't bright, it was a battle of my fair hearing and her poor dialect. When she asked, "Are you sure you wish to proceed?", she ended the sentence with an incorrect English phrasing that ends with a higher tone. It implies "Are you crazy"? Yes, I'm crazy! You all know that! I signed the form but felt quite uncomfortable with this doctor that I had never met before. Tuesday morning began with the admitting and then the famous shave. Yep, down below and the top half of my chest and back. After waiting almost 3 hours we get the call to hop on the bed and head to the O/R. After a 1/2 hour or more wait in the recovery room before entering the cath theatre I was asked to move from my bed onto the operating table. I wasn't phased about any of it. 2 years ago I was frozen with fear. Now I'm processing my surroundings like it's just another McDonald's. It is weird though - laying on a table they remove your Johnny and attached your cardiac wiring. You lie back buck bare. A nurse prepares the groin site by swabbing you with an ample supply of a solution like Iodine. (Note to guys, make sure your favorite friend doesn't lie in the crease of your groin. The solution stings so bad you will try to move him to higher ground with your fingers. You will then get growled at by the nurse and she will move him for you and then reapply the solution. I won't elaborate any further). They then place theses really neat plastic type sheets on you that make you feel warm while leaving your upper leg/ groin site open for the surgeon. 20 minutes or more go by and the nurses have now prepared the tables with the instruments and probes. The screens for the surgeon are all lit up with all your heart stats. My rates and flutter were all over the map. I'm pretty good at reading the QRS and could see how I was running at 6-7 to 1 in flutter with my BPM running between 38 and 68, but 90% of the time I was suffering from Bradycardia at 40BPM. Next thing the wonderful EP doctor I had met a month earlier - Dr. Parkash, pops over to say hello while my head is on it's side on the operating table. She has a nice face and the weird angle view I had had her turning her head to match mine. I was glad to see her. I guessed she left for the lab control room to operate the laser while another surgeon — a Chinese doctor begins freezing my groin for the sheath and probes that will be inserted into my heart. Seemed like only minutes but I asked him when he was going to place the sheath and he replied, "I already have it inside your vein". I was both pleasantly surprised and glad as it didn't hurt anymore than a minor mosquito bite. This guy was good! A voice comes over the speaker in the ceiling from the lab. It's Doctor Parkash and she says they'll be starting the procedure in a minute. Suddenly my heart does a skip and a jump which was a strange sensation. She came back on the speaker and said they were ready to begin. They must have a good microphone near me and I asked what the sensation was and she replied back through the speaker they had done a heart pacing. It was time. If you've read my other entries you know I am quite deep. I approached the open heart surgery 2 years ago much like a coward. This time I was firm on setting the record straight that I was going to take this procedure like a man. I said I was ready to Doctor Parkash. I wanted to watch the screens while they were doing the laser scarring. I was not going to let this opportunity get away from me. I was told the day before in an honest conversation with a Nurse Practitioner that some people don't mind the procedure and that others find it intense and don't make it through without major sedation or being knocked out. Well, I wanted to watch the flutter disappear and have that Eureka moment on the QRS screen. You know, when that final zap of the laser has beat the flutter and life goes back to being the new "normal" again, at least until the valve goes bad - hopefully in 10 years or more! Have you ever burned yourself with a wood carving kit or soldered wires together with a soldering iron and gotten too close to the tip and gotten your finger tips burned? That's what it feels like. Inside your heart. I winced at the first burn. The second one was 1.5 times worse. By the third burn I was starting to gasp. Dr. Parkash in the lab asked me how I was doing. I said fine depending on how many more times she was going to burn me. She said likely 16 in total. I told her I'd do my best but I was worried. Another zap and I was beginning to believe I couldn't get to 16. Each burn was becoming harder to take as one was stacked on the other. On the 8th burn I had started to twist and turn like you do when faced with pain you can no longer take. I was grimacing hard like you do in the gym when you need that extra grunt to get the last rep. I had begun to move myself around on the table in an attempt to escape the pain. I was worried I would move the wires in my heart while she was ablating me and cause myself damage. At this point the pain and procedure was coming to hard and too fast for me to try and make sense of. I knew I was in trouble. Dam, I wanted to prove I could do this and I felt it slipping away. Located to my immediate left, the large video screens and all the hi-tech machinery became invisible during the procedure. I was focusing on the pain and looking at the ceiling above me - totally trying to get through the procedure and not let myself down on taking this head on. Dam, I couldn't turn my head anymore to the left to see the monitors. I had become incapacitated by the ablation. I've had open heart surgery and I've had my right index finger cut off and I haven't felt pain as bad as this. The doctor came back on the speaker and said that they would give me some drugs to ease the pain. I thought to myself, "Good, then I can watch the screens and not be struggling with focusing on pain". That's the last thing I remember. I woke up in the operating theatre — alone. Everyone was gone. At least that's my perspective. The large video screens that were so brightly lit were now dead. The room was dim. I started calling out "hello" and on the 4th call I heard someone in the other end of the room say "hello" back to me. A few minutes later I was moved back onto my bed and wheeled into the recovery room I had waited in pre- procedure. Someone then took me back to my room. My groin wasn't sore like my heart cath 2 years ago. But I had this terrible feeling. The whole time after waking up I'm now thinking to myself — I failed. I never got the Eureka moment. I never saw the QRS revert back to an NSR. I failed and let myself and the doctors down. I couldn't do it. My wife — bless her, was waiting for me. She asked me how it went. I replied, I don't know". I didn't know. I've been cardioverted 3 times. I felt the tingle of my skin where it was burnt from the paddles. I realized they cardioverted me. When did they do that? Why? A hundred questions. I laid there on the bed motionless, as instructed by my nurse. They don't want the vein to pop and blood to start running down my leg. Either did I. A couple hours later the Chinese surgeon who had so skillfully worked the wires into my groin and heart dropped by. I had a 100 questions. Did I already say that? Obviously a skilled doctor, he seemed to have a limited English vocabulary, although his diction was very good. "How did I do", I asked. "Pretty good", he replied. Pretty good? What does that mean? He couldn't seem to find the right words to explain. After an exchange of questions that didn't seem to get answered, he passed my wife a sheet of paper for us to take back to my GP here on the Island. The handwritten duplicate stated the ablation procedure was a success without complications. Good thing I have the paper. Otherwise I wasn't sure. I guess I did pretty good. I feel I failed. I never got that moment I craved. I never made it through the procedure consciously. I never proved myself, I never got to see the screens lite up showing my new NSR, and I don't know what happened after the 8th laser and why and when was I cardioverted? I'm home, I'm itchy, and last night at the hotel I woke at 3:30 in such pain in my heart that I was shaking. After my wife called the QEII to see it this was "normal", a sleeping pill, a couple Ibuprofen, and total exhaustion got me back to sleep. I'm still asking myself, "What is Pretty Good"? I don't know, but I'm home. I wish I had 20 minutes with Dr. Parkash. She could answer all my questions and fulfill the mystery that now lives within me. I used to love Halifax. It was my favorite city. I had so many good times partying with my buddies when they were in University there in the late 70's and early 80's. The Toga parties at Fenwick, The Frat parties, The Midtown, the LBR! Then it became a city my wife and I loved to visit. I don't feel the same about it anymore. I still have 100 questions. Darren