It has now been 14 days since my surgery, and I am feeling better than I thought I would. However, I am still struggling. One of my biggest complaints is that I cannot sleep. Whether due to pain, not being able to sleep how I want (I’m forced to sleep on my back), or the stress of everything that has happened recently, I cannot sleep much. When I do, its only for about 2 hours at a time.
Another major struggle I am continually facing is pain, but it is not where you would think. Instead of my chest causing me problems (my chest does hurt, just not too badly) it is my back. When I was in the hospital it was my shoulders that hurt really badly, but now it is one specific part on my back that is between my right shoulder blade and my spine. It quite literally feels like there is a knife stuck deep in my back and someone is just sitting there spinning it or something. It HURTS. This is concerning because I have already had spinal fusion surgery (back in 2001) so I’m curious if the heart surgery somehow impacted the rods fused to my spine. When they opened me up for heart surgery, they first saw my sternum in half and then pull the sternum apart to get access to the heart. The sternum is attached to the ribs, and my ribs are basically connected to my spine. So I am wondering if my spinal rods got misplaced or a nerve got permanently pinched or something. I need to call my surgeon’s office about it and see what they say. Depending on their answer, I will probably call my orthopedic surgeon. Perhaps they could figure out the problem with a simple x-ray, but maybe something more in depth like an MRI will be needed to figure out what the problem is. Whatever the case, the cause of this pain needs to be attended to because it is paralyzing, and movement only makes it worse. I am supposed to be walking a lot after surgery but when I walk it only makes it hurt even more so I’m basically stuck in bed at this moment.
My blood pressure and heart rate have somewhat evened out now. They have been all over the place but both numbers have been pretty high. I’m thinking it is due to the amount of trauma my body underwent, and now that it has had some time to heal, everything is settling down nicely.
My post-op appointment has been scheduled, so I will be going back to Ann Arbor to see my surgeon and have a couple tests (EKG, Xray) on February 21st. That seems like such a long ways away and almost worrying that my heart will not be checked until then. I do have home nursing care right now but they only check the very basics of my heart: BP and HR. I feel as though more needs to be checked such as going to get an EKG done to make sure my heart is conducting electricity properly.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how my heart had already dissected before the operation. I was talking to my mom about it again today and it just seems unreal. Honestly, I’m wondering if my aorta had done MORE than simply dissect. Did it rupture? From my understanding, dissection means that one of the layers of the aorta tears and allows blood to seep into deeper layers of the aorta. An aortic RUPTURE, on the other hand, is when the aorta tears all the way through and blood escapes the aorta. The latter is what happened to me. Is that classified as a dissection or a rupture? And if it is a rupture, that makes it all the more amazing that I am alive, because ruptures are fatal. This is one topic that I will bring up to my surgeon when I see him at my post op appointment.
Anyway, not much else to report. Aside from the pain and lack of sleep, things are going pretty well! Before surgery everyone I spoke to said the surgery was not as bad as the anticipation. I think this is partly true. The first 2 or 3 days in the hospital were utter hell. But aside from those few days, everything has been a lot easier than I expected.
Another major struggle I am continually facing is pain, but it is not where you would think. Instead of my chest causing me problems (my chest does hurt, just not too badly) it is my back. When I was in the hospital it was my shoulders that hurt really badly, but now it is one specific part on my back that is between my right shoulder blade and my spine. It quite literally feels like there is a knife stuck deep in my back and someone is just sitting there spinning it or something. It HURTS. This is concerning because I have already had spinal fusion surgery (back in 2001) so I’m curious if the heart surgery somehow impacted the rods fused to my spine. When they opened me up for heart surgery, they first saw my sternum in half and then pull the sternum apart to get access to the heart. The sternum is attached to the ribs, and my ribs are basically connected to my spine. So I am wondering if my spinal rods got misplaced or a nerve got permanently pinched or something. I need to call my surgeon’s office about it and see what they say. Depending on their answer, I will probably call my orthopedic surgeon. Perhaps they could figure out the problem with a simple x-ray, but maybe something more in depth like an MRI will be needed to figure out what the problem is. Whatever the case, the cause of this pain needs to be attended to because it is paralyzing, and movement only makes it worse. I am supposed to be walking a lot after surgery but when I walk it only makes it hurt even more so I’m basically stuck in bed at this moment.
My blood pressure and heart rate have somewhat evened out now. They have been all over the place but both numbers have been pretty high. I’m thinking it is due to the amount of trauma my body underwent, and now that it has had some time to heal, everything is settling down nicely.
My post-op appointment has been scheduled, so I will be going back to Ann Arbor to see my surgeon and have a couple tests (EKG, Xray) on February 21st. That seems like such a long ways away and almost worrying that my heart will not be checked until then. I do have home nursing care right now but they only check the very basics of my heart: BP and HR. I feel as though more needs to be checked such as going to get an EKG done to make sure my heart is conducting electricity properly.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how my heart had already dissected before the operation. I was talking to my mom about it again today and it just seems unreal. Honestly, I’m wondering if my aorta had done MORE than simply dissect. Did it rupture? From my understanding, dissection means that one of the layers of the aorta tears and allows blood to seep into deeper layers of the aorta. An aortic RUPTURE, on the other hand, is when the aorta tears all the way through and blood escapes the aorta. The latter is what happened to me. Is that classified as a dissection or a rupture? And if it is a rupture, that makes it all the more amazing that I am alive, because ruptures are fatal. This is one topic that I will bring up to my surgeon when I see him at my post op appointment.
Anyway, not much else to report. Aside from the pain and lack of sleep, things are going pretty well! Before surgery everyone I spoke to said the surgery was not as bad as the anticipation. I think this is partly true. The first 2 or 3 days in the hospital were utter hell. But aside from those few days, everything has been a lot easier than I expected.