Ben's Posts

Yesterday was 2 weeks since surgery and 10 days at home. Recovery is going very well, walking 4 times a day for 15 minutes, I'm back to my baseline for every breath on the spirometer, and my appetite is mostly back to normal. I'm starting to get back into a normal-ish sleeping pattern also, just shifted by a couple hours. One thing I noticed last night and tonight was a little blood leaking from the center of my incision, and tonight I can see it's starting to open up a little. No external stitches or staples, just the glue stuff. I'm going to call the surgeon first thing in the morning, but I was wondering if anyone has had this happen and what, if anything, was done? I've had a couple other surgeries, but never had this happen at an incision site.

I'm back! The tricuspid valve repair was not working, despite trying 2 different times, so I ended up with a porcine valve. Overall I was in surgery for a bit over 8 hours, spent less than 24 hours in ICU, and I've been in the cardiac care unit for 3 nights. It sounds like I'll be going home today or tomorrow, but I've been up walking, got cleared by the occupational and physical therapy folks. I'm very happy to be on the other side of this surgery, and happy about how good I feel 4 days out.

Yesterday my wife and I were on the way to the hospital to have the TEE and heart cath stuff done when we got a phone call that my surgery was rescheduled for July 13th. We were both happy to hear that, waiting 2 weeks seems better than waiting a month. All the tests went well yesterday, the doctor said he could barely get my heart to go into A-fib, which he said is promising for post surgery recovery, less of a chance of that occurring, though he said it's still possible.