I realize that I probably have more missing body parts than most people and also realize that much of that is my own fault. The problem with my arteries happened over many years and the surgery happened almost a decade ago. But nothing, from my broken arm when I was a teenager and hormonally challenged to play football to my kidney tumor and its attendant ileus and to my way too clogged arteries wound up being without complications of some kind. Fortunately, each of those events had what we could all call happy endings.
One morning early (why on earth do surgeons want to do their thing at dawn?!! Tee times in the afternoon?) Susan drives me to the hospital where I am admitted and led to a Prep. Room. Some non-qualified barber, disguised as a nurse, shaves my chest and does the old IV trick, poking around at my vein until she finds it. What is waiting in OR is a competent cardiothoracic surgeon who will remove a vein from my left leg, cut off pieces of four arteries, and replace them with pieces of the vein he has earlier removed from my leg. Piece of cake!
Once, I am told, doctors actually cut into your rib cage and used terrible things called “spreaders” to push people’s ribs apart to allow them to get at the heart. Now, they have advanced technology: an electric-powered, rotary saw. Not unlike the one I have in the garage! They cut down to your sternum with a scalpel and then saw your chest open. I hope this isn’t all too gruesome, but remember: I can’t actually see what they are doing to me. I sleep like a baby through the whole thing.
The Surgery and After
When the doctor finishes replacing all of the arterial parts he has cut away with still living vein parts that he stitches to teh two ends of each now open artery, he staples my open chest closed. I assume he is not using anything like my little office stapler or like the saddle stitch stapler I once used to create chapbooks, but some kind of incredibly expensive medical tool that, well, does much the same thing. Afterwards? Neat stitches to tie the skin and muscle back together. A very strong child could do it. Very strong! This kind of surgery requires muscles.
I wake up. That’s a nice thing to be able to type. Susan is there. I’m grateful she took the “in sickness and in health” part of the ceremony seriously many years ago. The doctor comes into the ICU and tells us that everything went well and that I might anticipate some bruising (I continue to have some bruises from that surgery...not psychological one, physical ones). His recommendation is to walk a lot. I fail to understand why I receive a prescription to get a handicapped placard for my car if I am supposed to walk a lot. I don’t use it. I walk.
Walking (I have written an essay called "Walking" before. So has Henry David Thoreau!)
Well, Susan and I walk. My first outing is half a block down the street to the mailbox. When I get home, I’m exhausted. Each day, a little bit farther. Finally, I am strong enough to take a solo walk out of our neighborhood and all the way down the hill to Blanco Road. I am able to look to the north and see the intersection with Bitters Road where I had my convergence of the twain with another car less than a month earlier. Since then, I have passed out on Festival Hill, met with a neurologist, then a cardiologist, and had a quadruple by-pass. One lousy month! How time flies when you’re having fun!
I am scheduled to start back to work the next week, but Susan and I take one more walk. She notices that I seem to be not exactly limping but that my left foot is dragging a little. She loads me into the Honda Civic and takes me to see Dr. Atlas.
The next surgery happens very quickly, but more about that in the next blog entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment