Damn just has this entry all written and Rapidwaver crashed as I was about to publish it. AARRGHH!! Anyway, time to start over.

So overall I am doing pretty damn well. Still walking 2.1 miles a day around the Veteran’s Center, up the big hill now (though I do have to stop to catch my breath going up as that is a big hill). Certainly have more energy now than I can remember having before, ever. So that is pretty amazing.

Now for the bad.

First off is my back. It is so out that it is hard to sleep through the night. I mean my back is just a damn mess at this point. It is out in the middle, and both my upper and lower back are hurting. I need a chiropractor so bad, though my sternum won’t be healed at all for another week, though he says he can use the hammer to help, which might be worth it, because I am hurting in a big way!

And the cough. Yes, I still have liquid in my lungs from the chest machine, and it is still clear, so not infected. It is better, but I am still coughing every late afternoon, and it hurts (though not nearly as bad as it previously hurt). I am still doing my spirometer a few times a day, and have gotten up to an average of 4000ml and am hitting 4500, when I was told that average is 3000-3500ml, so that seems pretty good. Have to talk to my cardiologist about it tomorrow.

The chest wounds are still causing trouble, though they are better if I just keep them totally dry and clean them with betadine and alcohol at least once a day.

Here they are from my point of view where you can see the right one sticking out, and the left has dried up around the edges and keeps hitting off stuff while I sleep. And both randomly leek a clearish liquid. Gross!

Here they are right side up.

And my big wound as well. The top wound has actually been losing it’s scab as well and leaving a divot. Right now it is mostly filled in, and if I keep it dry it seems to be healing. the scab keeps losing pieces and bleeding a bit though. Still nothing compared to the chest wounds!

And today is the day that I lose my fully adjustable from standing up to laying down medical chair! THE HORROR!

Here it is sheet covered ready to be picked up.

This thing was a lifesaver for the first couple of weeks, though I never did help getting up (the kettlebells before surgery were key), but just to be able to lay back and be fairly comfortable watching TV was the best. Now I am going to miss my chair for playing games and watching TV! The couch is just not the same, especially while my back hurts, but afterwards I will still miss it!

So overall doing pretty damn well.

So I woke up last night to pee and looked down and my left chest tube wound, had popped it’ scab. Actually about 3/4 of it had come off, and was like a flap, so I removed the rest and had to once again stiri strip it back together. It didn’t look as bad as the last time, but still had a kind of deep whole.

Now by the morning it has bled and filled in the rest of the wound making another scab, that will likely do the same thing as this one as it continues to heal.

You can see it is the one on the right.

And today my in home nurse is coming for her final visit, and I already told her about it, but this is still the final visit (I am assuming that is all the insurance will pay for). These should have had better stitches, and they should have stayed in longer. First I should have been in the hospital another day or two, and the stitches should have stayed in for 7 days instead of 3. Maybe then these would be more closed and not keep opening up like they have been!

And from the looks of it, my other scab is going to pop off soon, and do the same thing.

This kept me up for a while last night, and I just didn’t get enough sleep. I wonder how long I will have to deal with this before these wounds are healed (or as healed as they are going to get).

So I woke up last night to pee and looked down and my left chest tube wound, had popped it’ scab. Actually about 3/4 of it had come off, and was like a flap, so I removed the rest and had to once again stiri strip it back together. It didn’t look as bad as the last time, but still had a kind of deep whole.

Now by the morning it has bled and filled in the rest of the wound making another scab, that will likely do the same thing as this one as it continues to heal.

You can see it is the one on the right.

And today my in home nurse is coming for her final visit, and I already told her about it, but this is still the final visit (I am assuming that is all the insurance will pay for). These should have had better stitches, and they should have stayed in longer. First I should have been in the hospital another day or two, and the stitches should have stayed in for 7 days instead of 3. Maybe then these would be more closed and not keep opening up like they have been!

And from the looks of it, my other scab is going to pop off soon, and do the same thing.

This kept me up for a while last night, and I just didn’t get enough sleep. I wonder how long I will have to deal with this before these wounds are healed (or as healed as they are going to get).

Wow, so 4 weeks out from open heart surgery! Crazy! Kind of surreal. In some ways I am already so much better, but I really want the sternum to heal so I can drive and lift things (well can never lift more than 40 pounds) and so I can go to a chiropractor because my back hurts!

Sleeping on my back is already unpleasant, but with my back out and hurting so badly it is so much worse. It is really really painful. In fact it is the worst part right now, and only being able to take Tylenol does not help much either!

And I am still coughing. Having to have Kelly beat my back when she gets home to loosen phlegm. It is still clear so not infected, but every night it gets annoying and I start coughing, so have to get it out. Wish I could be hung upside down and just let my damn lungs drain!

Still am walking 2.1 miles a day up and down some big hills around the veterans center close to here. Still going down the big hill and not up it, but doing pretty damn good!

My wounds are looking better as well. The main wound is much smaller, though has gotten much redder, but really isn’t bothering me. Except it feels tight and gets a little sore at time.

And the top scab keeps losing pieces and bleeding a bit at times.

The two chest tube wounds have really scabbed over and gotten crusty, and are both pushing out, like it is healing below and pushing the huge scab out.

You can see how crusty it looks here, though it is not that yellow without the flash.

Here is without the flash, You can see how they are pushing out a bit.

Just making sure to keep them dry. Putting on a big waterproof bandaid to take a shower, and then cleaning them with betadine and then alcohol. And that seems to be working. They are not hurting and seem to be healing though my skin sure is dry around them!

Still see those 2 wounds as being my worst scars, as the main incision has such good stitching it will end up looking pretty damn good I think!

Just want to give a quick update on my chest tube wounds. They are doing much better. Seems I have finally figured it out, and the thing is to keep them as dry as possible. If they open up use the smallest stiri strip that you can to hold it closed so the scab can re-close, and then take it off and let it totally dry out.

The Chest Wounds are much dryer now.


Now it seems that I am consistently getting little little leaks, that eventually dry out, and it seems part of the process of the deep scabs being pushed out of the wounds so it can heal from the bottom. And I have been cleaning them daily with beta dine and then alcohol, which dries them out.

Covering them too much allows the wounds to stay wet, and that is when I started getting pain, and the wound would open up. So make sure to keep the wounds as dry as possible!

UPDATE:

Later in the same day, and the wound got wet in the shower and opened back up, and when it opens I get random pains, and have had to stiri strip it again with the thinest strip I could buy cut in half. And hopefully it will dry out completely and seal again.

And the other one is pushing the scab out. So hopefully it is healing underneath, and doesn’t do the same thing the other one did and open up again once it pushes the current scab out.

Weird how these chest tube holes are my biggest issue (except my back being out, which some heat helped early, but it is really hurting again now).

3 weeks out out from Surgery as of yesterday, and mostly doing pretty darn good.

I walked today for 45 minutes, around the big block of my neighborhood, which is my longest single walk yet. And I could easily walk farther if only my back didn’t hurt so much, as it is so incredibly out and in pain. They tell me it was from being in a horrible position on the operating table for 5 hours. The amazing thing is I couldn’t have done that without stopping 3 times before the surgery, so i am vastly improved on that front.

My chiropractor said he could he adjust my back with that little adjustment hammer after 4 weeks, but I will probably wait until 6 week when my sternum is supposed to be mostly healed. Of course only if I can take the pain for that long. My back pain is the worst part right now!

My lungs are also doing better, with most of the liquid out I think. For the first time in weeks when Kelly beat my back last night and I coughed, I didn’t go into a deep hack, but had to keep coughing on my own.

Now for the bad, and that would be the wounds from my chest tubes. My left one was getting painful yesterday, and I finally took of the steri strips and it was way too moist and still open, so I have had to leave it open, and it mostly will dry up and close, and stop hurting. The problem is even walking I sweat so much that it got wet and opened up again, and is just slowly drying out and closing up against now. I am having to clean it with betadine and alcohol allot, but as of yet it is not infected. Just need to keep it closed and dry so it will heal!

You can see the one on the right is yellow. That is the scab when it is wet and has opened up again.

The one on the right also has been leaking on and off, but it is not puss, so it is not infected. Likely it is because the scabs are so incredibly deep, and they need to move out of the way to be able to heal underneath, so it is likely leaking to try and push some of the scab out so it can continue to heal.

Honestly the chest tub holes are the worst part right now. It seems like not only did they not tie the initial stitches tight enough, but they took them out after only 2 or 3 days, when they should have been in for a week, so I think that is what is causing most of the issues.

The hardest part right now is the low sodium diet. It is actually horrifically frightening to look at ingredients in a grocery store and see just how much salt is added to just about everything we eat! There is so much salt around that they say a 3500 MG diet of sodium is low sodium, though I have likely been doing under 1000 mg. And the one real help has been Mr Dash seasonings (in many flavors) as it has no sodium and does add a whole lot of flavor. Otherwise I don’t know what I would do. And really I fucking want a RUEBEN!!!!!!

So the nurse came by yesterday and she talked to my surgeon’s main nurse, and for now I don’t have to go get stiches. They have stiri stripped my open chest tube wound after seriously cleaning it out with both beta dine and alcohol. And she left an opening in the middle for it to dry and for to beta dine it 3 times a day, but she will be back today to check on it again.

The Orange on the strips is the betadine.

And here is the whole wound, which is looking so much better, and the bump at the top is almost gone. Honestly the main incision is not going to be nearly as bad a scar as the 2 chest wounds!

So over the weekend one of my two wounds for my chest tubes opened up. It is healed at the bottom, but it has left a nasty opening and doesn’t look so good. We called the nurses and they said to steri strip it closed and keep it clean and dry and iodined, and at some point today the nurse is supposed to come by and take a look. I may be going to to the emergency room to get stitched back up, that will make for a fun day! It does look rather nasty, looks like the scab has stayed wet from the iodine and is all yellow and pus-ey looking (makes sense that a scab is made from white blood cells).

Other than that the worst part is the coughing. I seem to still have liquid in my lungs from having the tube into my lungs fro surgery. It is maybe a little better, but I am still having to use a spirometer to exercise my lungs and have someone clap my back while I cough to clear the liquid (which is clear so not infected), but it hurts like all hell, and there is no way I can do the 2 minutes on each side of my lungs as nose fills with the liquid and i have to sit up to clear my head in between switching to the other side.

The only thing that hurts as much is when I sneeze, and all the pollen outside is not helping that much, and while my nose spray helps, it is not helping much.

On the actual recovery side I am doing pretty great. I am to about 5000 steps a day and can pretty easily do a 25 minute walk without getting out of breath and there is no way I could do that before. I was getting tired walking slowly, and would have to stop a few times in 15 minutes, so there is obviously a vast improvement there, and hopefully it will continue to get better.

I seem to have stopped shedding weight as my appetite comes back, but I went into surgery at 235 pounds and am now at 219.5, so I at least have lost some weight, and hopefully with the extra exercise I can continue to lose more in the near future.

One of the hardest things is a low sodium diet. That is to keep my blood pressure down and heart rate down, and it is as hard as all hell. Have any of you every looked at all the sodium in items at the grocery store? It is sick how much sodium is in our food! I mean a low sodium diet is something under 3000 MG, though I am likely doing well under 1000, but it is so hard. No deli meat, have to cook your own chicken, and make your own salad dressing. There is so much sodium in even no fat salad dressing. And it seems most grocery stores don’t even carry the lowest sodium options that companies make (like Tuna Fish they have 50% less sodium, but the companies make another step beyond that). And bread has so much sodium in it per slice. And why does ice cream have sodium?

I have been told to cut back on Tylenol (which is all I am on for the pain), so I am having very little in a day, but still need it at times. Mainly I am getting headaches, and have some muscles aches still, and then my is killing me where it is out. Can’t wait to be able to get my back adjusted, but have to wait for my sternum to heal first, so it will be at least another 4 weeks before I can get it fixed, and that seems to be one of the main things causing me pain at this point.

Still it is amazing where I am at about 2 and a half weeks out, just hope to get this chest wound taken care of today, but still no word from the nurse as of yet.

Woke up this morning and one of my chest tube wounds had opened a bit in the night, and was bleeding. Think they took the stiches out too early. Had to get butterfly bandages and tape to close it up.

Also am so sore today. Walked too much yesterday, over 7500 steps and am paying for it. My knees and legs are killing me. Pushed it too much.

Many of you will know this, but I was born with the genetic heart condition, hyper tropic cardio myopathy. I have a thickened wall in the outflow of my heart where it was creating a serious pressure gradient, and making my heart beat faster. And both of those served to allow less oxygen to get out of my heart. I was on medicine to slow my heart rate so that the oxygen problem would not get too bad, but it hit the point of having to have surgery.

My cardiologist sent me to one good surgeon, but my family wanted me to go to the excellent UCLA Cardiac Unit. We ended up going to a couple of doctor’s because of some issues, but after a couple of months surgery was scheduled.

I immediately got a stress headache that lasted the month, and was not helped by a lot of stress at work, and having to work right up to surgery.

On the Tuesday before surgery we got a call and they moved my surgery up a day to make sure it fit into the schedule. We had to call the day before, and they kept making it earlier in the day until we had to be there at 5:30 am. Met family there and checked in and they called us in shortly and took me to pre-op on the second floor with my wife. I got changed into my dressing gown, peed a few times, and saw a bunch of nurses, and a couple of anesthesiologists. And at 8:30 they came in and gave me the anesthetic, and wheeled me out. That is the last I remember for a while.

Here is me in pre-op and with my first IV put in.

Waking up in the ICU is a complete blur. Just some images and feelings. I saw my wife and the nurses and then my family, but it was all a blur.

This is me with Kelly, still unconscious, and with the breathing tube still in.

After I am initially awake with my mom.

And here I am with Kelly after the surgery.

And here with with Kelly where you can see the horrible things that inflated on my legs to keep me from getting blood clots.

And here I am retaining some serious water.

The nurses were amazing. And so helpful, but that first night was hell. I was told it was from being stretched out on the table for so long, but I have never felt muscle pain like I felt that night. I just couldn’t get ahead of the pain until they gave something via IV that knocked out the pain.

That first day my favorite thing in the world was ice chips. Water, I would immediately throw up immediately, but a spoonful of ice chips was like heaven.

Then I developed a severe atrial fibrillation, a weird heart rhythm that was all over the place. They tried everything to get it back, from drug cocktails to playing with the inserted pacing wires and trying to re-pace my heart. Finally they put me under for 10 minutes and tried to shock me back into a sinus rhythm, but it didn’t work.

Me not looking so good.

Later they had me go for my first walk, which was not that bad. Honestly doing kettle bell exercises for the month before surgery made a huge difference, and while I had trouble moving around in bed, I had no trouble getting up or laying down. I went for my first walk, made hard by having to push my own IV stand, but when I sat back down the arythmia was gone. Still I was having pvc’s which are
pre-cursors to an arythmia, so the arythmia could come back.

My first walk.

At this point I had a popcycle, which was amazing. Other food not so much as my throat was destroyed by the throat tube I had during the surgery. I mostly ate plain chicken breasts and jello in the hospital.

Sitting in my chair.

And they were slowly unhooking me. First my catheter, then some IV’s including the large one from my neck, which was a mistake. They ended up needing another IV line for the drugs for the arythmia, but I am exceptionally hard to find veins in, and I had 3 nurses each poke me at least 3 times before getting a second IV in, and that one would only draw blood or one night.

The third day they took out my chest tubes and pacing wires and that hurt like hell! And I bled allot, so much that they had to do an echo to see the excess blood around my heart, and they had me on lasiks to try and pee it out.

My First Look at my wound. Amazing that those are stitches. Can’t even see them.

Me with the worst food of all time, that stir fry should not have been called food.

The 4th day it seems was all that my insurance approved me for, though my doctor wanted 7 days, and they kicked me out of the hospital, at least a day too soon in my opinion.

Ready to go and hugging to my pillow for dear life as every bump was not pleasant.

The drive home was horrible, as I felt every bump in the road, and it was not pleasant.

The first night at home was at least quiet, as the ICU is literally the loudest place on Earth. There are more alarms, phones ringing, people talking, etc. It could not be louder, plus you are getting poked and prodded every couple of hours. Of course waking up to pee 8 times in the night was not much help. In fact from when I got home I weighed 242 pounds and in 2 days down to 222 pounds having gone in around 235 pounds.

At home in bed. You can really see where the chest tubes were here.

At home I was still getting night terrors, which are so surreal and scary and terrifying. And they left me in pools of sweat every night, but they only lasted a few more days.

Food was a strange thing, as my taste buds have reverted to those of a child. Plain thing and simple things. Tastes that would normally bore me. I have not even been able to take any spice, and I normally love spicy anything.

The pain in my muscles has gotten better, but not for days. It has been an awful, all over pain.

Now I am just about out of my prescription pain meds, so I am sure I will be in more pain, as Tylenol doesn’t do much (and Advill and Aleve could cause bleeding).

Each day I am doing better and walking farther, and getting a little better. I can’t believe how good I am now, as the first week was much worse than I thought it could be. Horribly bad, but things have gotten so much better. I mean much of my main wound is peeling off and the skin has healed.

Walking with Kelly, the button up shirts are key as you can open them quickly once you are in the shade.

My wife got me a universal position electric chair, which could also help me get up, though I really don’t need that. That has been incredible, and is so comfortable, that I am really going to miss it! I highly recommend it as well as the kettle bell exercises before surgery. They have made a huge difference!

My wound after 2 weeks. Looking pretty red, but the scabs are almost gone from the main incision, so I couldn’t be happier.

And I don’t know what I would have one without my wife, who stayed with me the whole time at the hospital in ICU and my mother who was there most of the time. The two have helped more than they could ever know.