Ash Patton - Heart Valve Journal

Ash Pattonposted a journal

2545 days ago

Shannon Gray, Barbara Wood, Dan Baltazor and reacted to this

Hi everyone! First of al, thank you very much that wished me well for surgery, I really appreciate the support this community gives and I aim to give back ...Read more

Hi everyone! First of al, thank you very much that wished me well for surgery, I really appreciate the support this community gives and I aim to give back much much more ❤️❤️❤️ The surgery was a success in the fact that my Mitral Valve has been replaced with a tissue valve however my surgeon informed me that had I waited any longer for this surgery, it wouldn’t have been good. My Mitral valve was so damaged that he attempted to repair it 3 times but the scarring on the valve itself from my OHS as a baby that it couldn’t be saved. ICU was an enormous challenge for me. As a young person you (and the doctors and nurses) expect to recover faster... NOPE! I spent six days in ICU due to my pain and nausea medication administered in such high doses that the nausea was literally uncontrollable. I would dry reach at the sight of a Vegemite sandwich. A. SANDWICH! Finally, Day 4 post op rolls around and I had a major meltdown. I screamed and cried out that I didn’t want to take any medication anymore, that I wanted to get better and that the drugs they were giving me just weren’t helping. I sobbed to my nurses that I couldn’t take it anymore and they sent for my doctor. He came in and said that in order to restore proper pain relief and alleviate nausea... I had to flush everything else out. They had me on Ketamine & Fentynyl for Pain but in doses fit for someone double my size and triple my age. And so, they removed me off all pain relief except for an oral anti nausea. The pain actually wasn’t that bad and it only flared up when I dry reached or actually vomited. My nurses stayed with me for the 4 hours they needed to flush the other drugs out of my system. One re taught me how to meditate properly (I previously learned it from my martial arts training) and the other helped me sit up and brushed my hair. God bless the both of them. The latter days of ICU were much, much better. I could hold a conversation when my beautiful partner came in with our best mate, I could actually focus a bit better and getting in and out of the shower wasn’t so difficult. My drains were removed (gross) as well as the drips in my neck on the day I was transferred to the ward. The next day after I got to the ward, my little mob of friends swooped in and came for a visit! They’d been harassing my poor partner everyday on whether I was out of ICU or not 😂😂😂 Nausea was still a little bit of a problem but that was due to the disgusting food. My friends would throw me in a wheelchair and take me downstairs to the AWESOME food court we had as the food in the ward for lack of a better word was TERRIBLE. Besides the food, the care I received in the ward was amazing, when I had a really annoying lady whinge and complain ALL DAY and then proceed to snore ALL NIGHT the nurses set me up at the back of the ward where the TV was because I didn’t want to take any more medication to help me sleep. 4 days after I stepped down to the ward, my case manager walked and gave me a big hug saying that I could finally go home. I was discharged on a stinking hot day (it felt so good to feel the heat of the Aussie sun after 10 days in hospital) I got to go home! Unfortunately I wish I could say that it ended there. I kid you not, the VERY NEXT DAY I woke up at 7am and I couldn’t sit up. I really needed to go to the bathroom so I asked my disgruntled baby next to me to help me sit up. He gently put his arms around me and I screamed. The pain was absolute agony! My right side of my ribs was spasming out of control and my temperature soared close to 40 degrees. He called the ambulance and I passed out from the pain. When I woke up, there were 3 paramedics working on me and they quickly administered morphine to help me get up, it took 3 hits of it just to get me to sit up and another 2 to get me onto the bed and into the ambulance. I was rushed back to the hospital and I was diagnosed with hospital acquired pneumonia. Are you kidding me?!?!! I was sent back to the same ward I was in last time, and they quickly administered antibiotics and muscle relaxants to try and help me breathe again. I couldn’t take a normal breath let alone a deep one for another day. Chest x rays were done and they showed the fluid building up in my right lung and in the exact spot where the spasms were originating from. My mother in law was absolutely livid, adamant that if they did an X-ray just before discharge they would have found the fluid and could have prevented the agony. My partner was utterly devastated, exhausted from driving to and from the hospital everyday and I could see how much seeing me in agony affected him 7 days of antibiotics and pain relief (while spending 4 nights resisting the urge to fight with my neighbour Mr Snorey, who was another whinger who snores VERY LOUDLY) and I was finally sent home and that’s where I stayed. Due to spending a total of 18 days in hospital it has slowed my progress down a lot. So I’ll end this entry with this. Don’t rush your body. Your mind may be ready but your body might not be. Even if your young, sometimes you just can’t bounce back as quickly as you think you should and that’s okay. It really is and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Open Heart Surgery is nothing to scoff at, it IS a big deal so take your time, don’t push yourself too hard that you’ll set yourself back and keep on ticking!