Nikki's Posts

Hi Everyone! I don't get on here very often, I don't know why? Y'all seem to be the only ones that know what I'm really going through, or at least have a better idea. Which is why I'm on here now .... I need your help, in the form of feedback, ideas, etc. At the end of November, I went back into the hospital to have a hole in my heart repaired. I had to go in two days before the procedure, they had to wien me of the Coumadin and do a Heparin bridge, and they said I would be there a couple days after just until my INR was back were it should be. But what was supposed to be a 5 day stay turned out to be 14 days!! The procedure was done like an angiogram and they went in through my leg. It was all supposed to be "routine". When I woke up, my chest was so sore and I couldn't understand why. Then the Doctor came and talked to me and told me it was from the chest compressions that he had to do because I CODED TWICE!!! Thank God, they were able to fix the hole. The next day, my chest was bruised and I could barely move. Mind you, I'm not fully recovered from the three open heart surgeries from earlier in the year. And I felt like I had been hit by a bus. But the newest echo shows my heart finally working well. YAY!! But here's the problem. I'm struggling, personally, emotionally. I don't know exactly how to explain it but I don't feel like myself. My tastes have changed, my mood and way of thinking has changed. I can't seem to get enough sleep, I practically slept the whole time I was in the hospital during the day because the night shift wouldn't leave me alone. After I came home, I dealt with insomnia at night and slept during the day but that's kinda passed. My Doctor prescribed me a pill to keep me up during the day and give me energy but even that doesn't work half the time. I miss the me that I used to be. I feel like 2018 aged me 10 years. I was expecting to feel so much better after my heart was fixed so I could get back to living my life. But I'm having a really hard time stepping back into it.

It's been a while since I've been on here. I wanted to wait until I had something good to report. Sorry to say, this isn't the case. Well, I take that back, my INR is finally stable.... Yay Me!! But since I was on here last, I've had pneumonia twice, and now I have pleurisy. My last echo, in September, showed another leak but because of the weird placement of my Mytral Valve and all the metal, everything doesn't show up like it should. So a couple weeks ago I had to have a TEE which showed a hole in the RCA just above my Aortic Valve, or as they called it, a VSD. So tomorrow I have to go have a CT scan so they can see exactly where it is. Then I will be scheduled to go Back in the hospital to have it fixed. I haven't even fully recovered from my last surgeries and I have to go back in for another one. However, this one will not be an open heart procedure. From my understanding, it's more like an angiogram but I will still be knocked out. So if I could ask you all to keep me in your prayers, I would greatly appreciate it. I just keep telling myself, one of these days, I will be past all of this and back to living my life. I can't wait because I've lost almost a whole year of it.