Pre-op Sit & wait day 2

We’re still in Cleveland, it’s still below freezing, it’s still snowing and we’re still in wait-mode. Today was day 2 really of the pre-op sitting-waiting phase mostly. Actually, it’s good practice for the main event, the Sitting-Waiting Championships, that come post-surgery and in the step-down unit. Well, for me anyway. M has to get up and walk around even when he really doesn’t want to, and perhaps use this breathing exercise tube gizmo that looks like it was the loser in a med student design contest and that he has to use up to 6 times per hour [Update - the video said 10 x/hour!!]  Per hour? How does that leave any time for coughing, peeing, wheezing, moaning, resting ("so you can sleep medicine" ... apologies NyQuil!)or the mandatory walking exercises? Whoever said recovery from surgery was mostly about ‘resting’ was sadly misinformed I think.

So today was the diagnostic cardiac catheterization (or just “cath”). I’m sure the CC does plenty of those. Most hospitals are doing them for a reason, probably because the person is a 55+ guy who ate a lifetime supply of Big Macs, with coronary artery disease and is either having a heart attack or about to, and they cath him to put in the stent or balloon and open stuff back up. I know when M had his one done at a local hospital back last fall he was the youngest guy in the cardiac wing, oh, by a good 25 years easy. Not quite so today, but close.

And when the doctor came out afterwards to talk to me, he said “got a great visual of his coronary arteries and they look good”. Ummm. Okey-dokey. To which I kinda replied, “great! But ya know he’s not in here for that?!” And I asked if he got any pics of the enlarged areas, or the parts needing resection [Hey! I’m not the medical whiz in this couple so I still don’t 100% get all the anatomy and medical jargon that M and the docs keep whizzing around. Sigh] and said/thought “Um, how is this helping with the surgery prep for the inside part of the heart?” To which the doc answered that he doesn’t look inside, not his job, that’s the surgeon’s and he’s just confirming the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy diagnosis and numbers and confirming M’s coronaries are “just great”.

Apparently any time they’re gonna crack ya open to stop and fiddle with the heart they do the pre-op ‘look-see’ and figure out if you need the super value, multi-pack of surgery, the buy-one-get-another-one-at-the-same-exorbitant-cost deal. Fix it all up at once. But in medical lingo there’s “no cabbage here” (“cabbage” = CABG = Coronary Artery Bypass Graft; something the clinic really kind of invented/perfected - well, at least according to the spiffy documentary/propaganda on CC that we saw last night in our CC afflilated hotel room). So, in the unfortunate instance that M develops the oh-so more common heart issues later on in life (geez I hope to hell not!) they’ll just have to unzip him and do work again in 25+ years. So no extra procedures for Thursday’s surgery, he’s back at the hotel resting (and typing away furiously on his own laptop as I write) and we go back for Day 3 of pre-op Sit-and-Wait tomorrow, including meeting the big time surgery god who will do the magic on Thurs.

Today’s Caretaking Exercise: Learning to put on & tie someone else’s shoelaces.

Hey, I don’t have toddlers so this was not some already learned and mastered skill for me! But post-cath and with a pressure dressing the size of a deck of cards attached to his upper leg, M couldn’t exactly do his own lace things … and doesn’t worship at the altar of the Merrell slip-on Moc like I do.

Ok. Past my new-improved bed time.

Peace.
J