Bob's Posts

It's been nearly a month since my open heart surgery for aortic valve replacement and a RCA bypass on 9/9/22, and I'm recovering at home. Still dealing with swelling in the leg used to borrow a vein, taking LASIX. Had a couple follow-up visits this week, seems to be going well. Can't complain, but if I did I'd say I'm tired of sleeping in my recliner and avoiding using my arms for pushing, pulling, and lifting anything over five pounds. You know the drill. Right now my chest wound is "weeping" and I'm watching that it doesn't open up. I'm keeping it dressed. Feeling stronger, and taking a couple walks a day, about a mile each.

September 13, 2022 "Take another little piece of my heart, now baby." Janis Joplin So a week out from Open Heart Surgery, it looks like you've been in a car wreck. Body battered, holes from drainage tubes are healing but you've got great plum-colored bruises, and of course the King Hell scar presiding over all, the ten-inch zipper in the middle of the chest, but you're so happy you made it through and can busy recovering. You just want to sleep, but healing requires movement, and your task now is avoiding blood clots and pneumonia, so you take walks. Little by little, you walk further. Around the ward, around the block, finally all the way to the park and back. You've become religious about exercising and taking walks and working with your incentive spirometer to expand your lungs, which were on the Heart-Lung Machine. You can do this. You've already cleared the initial hurdle. You've survived Open Heart Bypass Surgery.