About Me (In My Own Words)
I was admitted through the emergency room on the fifth with shortness of breath. They decided to keep me and treat me with Lasix and move the surgery up to Wednesday the seventh. I had the surgery Wednesday morning June 7 and I have to be honest it was much harder than I thought it would be even with all the preparation and the reading and the research I did and I'm a nurse so I tend to do that anyway.
Some of the issues that I experienced in the ccu were nausea postanesthesia and vomiting. Also my blood pressure dropped to 70's over 40s and they were having trouble getting it back up even with albumin and levophed and numerous other drugs plus fluids eventually about 36 hours later they got it up to about 95/68 .
Being in the CCU is very rough. You get no rest at all because they're in there at least every hour turning you and wiping you down and sitting you up and making sure that you eat something and constantly flushing and cleaning all of the lines that you have and there are a lot. Plus it's light and bright in there and the nurses station is right outside the room so you can hear everything. last night I actually got a decent nights sleep and only because I am home now .
Soon after you wake up, you will notice this urge to cough and a disgusting amount of mucus will come up. Spit it out! You will feel so much better like you can actually breathe a little bit. Still one of the things that's difficult . It kind of feels like you have a box around your chest and you can't expand your lungs like you used to,you can't take a deep deep breath when you really have to work on getting that back. Part of it is just that you have so much muscle soreness from the actual surgery itself. Pain wise most of my initial pain was between my shoulder blades I attribute that to positioning during surgery and it was pretty bad. The first night I did end up waking up in the middle of the night with 10 out of 10 pain in my sternum they gave me dilaudid IV which took care of it fairly quickly. You really have to be proactive and ask for the pain meds regularly because it is very tough to keep it under control when you are pretty out of it in the ICU. Another drug that helped for a lot longer period of time was Toradol IV. That gave me several hours of pretty good pain relief and if I had breakthrough pain they could give me IV Dilaudid or PO medication if I could swallow it. I also asked for Pepcid because I knew reducing the acid in my stomach would help with the nausea and it did.
They really push you to eat and drink constantly and it's really hard to do. You have zero appetite and nothing tastes good and you basically have to force yourself to drink fluids and to eat two to three bites here and there but do it anyway because you'll feel so much worse with no nutrition after a period of several days.
I was released to go home last evening the 10th. It seems very quick to most people and it seemed quick to me also,however my cardiologist was worried the longer I stay in the hospital the more open I am to all of the hospital acquired bugs and we really don't want me to pick up any of those. I did have some bladder burning and urgency so they started me on pyridium and an antibiotic as a preventative just in case I was coming down with a UTI from the catheter. Also,my hemoglobin dropped from 13 to 7.9 after the surgery which is pretty dramatic. I was so looking forward to having pink cheeks finally and now I am white as a ghost however it did go up to 8.9 in one day and they gave me 2 to 3 doses of oral iron pills so it does climb back up fairly quickly it's just a waiting game like everything else. it's very difficult to get out of bed and mobilize yourself even though they really push you to do that. Even sitting up in the chair, you feel terrible and all you really want to do is go back to bed which you can't lay flat in anyway .
It's very uncomfortable to lay flat so do yourself a favor and get yourself a wedge for the bed and put pillows on top of that it will keep you in almost a sitting up position and you will be much more comfortable.
I've had a pretty big surgery before with a long recovery and I felt like I had prepared myself well before the surgery, however, this surgery was much harder than I ever thought it would be. You really have to just take it day by day and hour by hour. For a while I thought I was doing something wrong even though I was doing everything the doctor told me to do including using the incentive Spirometer every hour while awake.
You will feel much worse if you don't expand your lungs, so do it anyway even though you hate it and even though it hurts.
Take your pain medicine regularly set the alarm on your phone in the middle of the night so you don't miss your night doses. It really makes a big difference. And start colace twice daily or peri colace as needed because the pain medication DOES stop you up.
Drink plenty of fluids, it does get better once you get home you are able to eat and drink a little bit more then you start feeling a little bit more like yourself . I will be four days postop today and I get to take a shower so I'm actually really happy about that, I think I will feel much better.
Good luck to all of you with pending surgeries. Mine ended up being a mitral valve repair instead of a replacement which everyone seemed to be happy about and the surgeon said it could not have gone better so I'm thankful for that but do I ever want to do this again? No way!
More Info About Me & My Heart
More About Me
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I am from:
Simi Valley
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My surgery date is:
June 7, 2017
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I was diagnosed with:
Mitral Regurgitation
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My surgery was:
Mitral Valve Repair
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My surgeon is:
Dr. Gholam Mohammadzadeh
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My hospital is:
Los Robles Medical Center
