The fix is in
First of all, as reported earlier, today's our anniversary. So that gold chocolate heart there has a double meaning today. Yay!
Secondly, I should probably post something about this week's hospital trip. It was a short but significant one. I'm thinking that this could well be my final LJ post using either of my "heart surgery" tags.
As expected, the trip was a single overnight with me back here at home by noon yesterday. Elizabeth and I checked in Tuesday at 7 am for a 9 am procedure. The procedure was finished by noon and I rested comfortably, albeit woozily, for the rest of the day. Elizabeth kept me company, along with visits from Astrid Bear, scarlettina, and varina8. I also had my iPod and my copy of Disquiet, Please!: More Humor Writing from The New Yorker, so the time spent on my back and mostly immobile was hardly a hardship. (Granted, my perspective on such forced recumbency is still mightily skewed from last year.)
So now I have a new coronary stent within the bypass graft that was rushed into place last year. Just the one stent rather than the possible two, as the optional second stent into the crimped left coronary artery was deemed too risky. That's okay -- the bypass vessel is actually larger than the native coronary artery it's replacing, and it's now performing 100% of the job that the coronary artery would be doing normally, so the second stent would have been a redundancy and not worth another cataclysmic fuck up.
The procedure went well. "Beautifully" as Dr. B put it. (Dr. B being, in fact, the surgeon whose "oops" last year resulted in the cascading shit parade we all know about. He did not perform the stent procedure, but was in the room to assist if necessary and, to quote my cardiologist who did perform it, "wring his hands.") Dr. A, the cardiologist, confirmed that it went quite well.
Not that it wasn't an interesting experience in its own way. First of all, I was (more or less) conscious through it. Just before the procedure we talked with Dr. A about what to expect, risk factors, etc. He told us that full general anesthesia would be too risky, so I would be sedated but aware and able to communicate. During the procedure I was doped up, alright, and didn't feel that big straw inserted into my groin and snaked up into my heart, the stent inflation and placement, and the withdrawal of that yikesome tubing out the aforementioned groin. I could, meanwhile, respond to questions ("How are you feeling?") and acknowledge information ("You may feel a little pressure in a moment") and, if necessary, mention that something didn't feel quite right or that the nurse looked like someone I knew in high school or, my, look at the pretty lights.
The whole procedure took about two hours, but in my hypnagogic state it didn't feel nearly that long.
Now, as Elizabeth mentioned in her LJ post, the fact of my semi-awareness did give me pause beforehand. Dr. A is a straight shooter when it comes to information, a quality I desire in circumstances like this. He had mentioned earlier that, given the unusual nature of my particular case, there was some risk in the stent itself causing damage -- rupturing the vessel tissue, that sort of thing. During the Tuesday morning pre-op consult, when asked what would happen if that risk were realized, he said, "You would die." Straight up, no dancing euphemistically around it, laying that card, thump, face up on the table. Either the procedure would work very well or it would kill me, with not much space in between.
Well.
When we asked what might happen to save the situation if -- hypothetically -- such an emergency occurred, he said that very little could be done. If the stent and/or the vessel failed in some catastrophic way, I'd be dead before emergency surgery could fix the problem. (It was the emergency bypass surgery that saved my life last year after the left coronary artery got screwed up during the valve surgery, but that was in an operating theater under different conditions suited for it.)
So we asked the next logical question: What were the odds of that occurring?
About 20%.
Eep. And "oh, crap." Yes, being a glass-half-full sort of person, I saw that that meant an 80% chance of nothing bad happening. Still, I had higher odds of dying than of picking a particular soda can from a six-pack while blindfolded.
What's more, I'd be conscious and aware as it was happening.
Well, if that doesn't get you thinking...
One of the notions I've written about last year's experience is that there were entire weeks during which I could have died, and nearly did so, without my ever knowing it. The difference between being unconscious and gone is what, subjectively? It's not an everyday realization, although it's an occurrence that happens to people all the time for all sorts of reasons. But having the notion moved from the abstract to the very real and personal does adjust one's outlook on ... well, just about everything.
Now here I was going into a situation where not only were the odds of my dying significantly greater than my normal everyday statistics, this time I'd know about it as it was happening -- and I'd be too sedated to respond physically much beyond moving my eyes as I watched whatever the doctors and staff would do in such a situation.
Fortunately, whatever concerns I might have had during the procedure re the shuffling off of mortal coils or six-pack odds or whatever, the sleepy-happy drugs did a fine job of keeping them tamped down.
Now, obviously, all that was academic. It went well. There will be check-ups and follow-up clinic visits, of course, to make sure everything is working as it should, and I'll be on a blood-thinner regimen for a while until my natural tissue protects the "invader" stainless steel stent. Fine. I'm here at home on the couch typing away to you, and soon Elizabeth and I and Kai will take a walk (a test drive, I suppose) to a nice lunch under a gorgeous blue-sky day, on our 15th anniversary.
And with that I end the tale. Thank you again, all of you who shared it with us and helped us through it. Your value is beyond price. Sorry to put you through all that.
I think now I'll write that comedy I've been putting off for a year or so.
Secondly, I should probably post something about this week's hospital trip. It was a short but significant one. I'm thinking that this could well be my final LJ post using either of my "heart surgery" tags.
As expected, the trip was a single overnight with me back here at home by noon yesterday. Elizabeth and I checked in Tuesday at 7 am for a 9 am procedure. The procedure was finished by noon and I rested comfortably, albeit woozily, for the rest of the day. Elizabeth kept me company, along with visits from Astrid Bear, scarlettina, and varina8. I also had my iPod and my copy of Disquiet, Please!: More Humor Writing from The New Yorker, so the time spent on my back and mostly immobile was hardly a hardship. (Granted, my perspective on such forced recumbency is still mightily skewed from last year.)
So now I have a new coronary stent within the bypass graft that was rushed into place last year. Just the one stent rather than the possible two, as the optional second stent into the crimped left coronary artery was deemed too risky. That's okay -- the bypass vessel is actually larger than the native coronary artery it's replacing, and it's now performing 100% of the job that the coronary artery would be doing normally, so the second stent would have been a redundancy and not worth another cataclysmic fuck up.
The procedure went well. "Beautifully" as Dr. B put it. (Dr. B being, in fact, the surgeon whose "oops" last year resulted in the cascading shit parade we all know about. He did not perform the stent procedure, but was in the room to assist if necessary and, to quote my cardiologist who did perform it, "wring his hands.") Dr. A, the cardiologist, confirmed that it went quite well.
Not that it wasn't an interesting experience in its own way. First of all, I was (more or less) conscious through it. Just before the procedure we talked with Dr. A about what to expect, risk factors, etc. He told us that full general anesthesia would be too risky, so I would be sedated but aware and able to communicate. During the procedure I was doped up, alright, and didn't feel that big straw inserted into my groin and snaked up into my heart, the stent inflation and placement, and the withdrawal of that yikesome tubing out the aforementioned groin. I could, meanwhile, respond to questions ("How are you feeling?") and acknowledge information ("You may feel a little pressure in a moment") and, if necessary, mention that something didn't feel quite right or that the nurse looked like someone I knew in high school or, my, look at the pretty lights.
The whole procedure took about two hours, but in my hypnagogic state it didn't feel nearly that long.
Now, as Elizabeth mentioned in her LJ post, the fact of my semi-awareness did give me pause beforehand. Dr. A is a straight shooter when it comes to information, a quality I desire in circumstances like this. He had mentioned earlier that, given the unusual nature of my particular case, there was some risk in the stent itself causing damage -- rupturing the vessel tissue, that sort of thing. During the Tuesday morning pre-op consult, when asked what would happen if that risk were realized, he said, "You would die." Straight up, no dancing euphemistically around it, laying that card, thump, face up on the table. Either the procedure would work very well or it would kill me, with not much space in between.
Well.
When we asked what might happen to save the situation if -- hypothetically -- such an emergency occurred, he said that very little could be done. If the stent and/or the vessel failed in some catastrophic way, I'd be dead before emergency surgery could fix the problem. (It was the emergency bypass surgery that saved my life last year after the left coronary artery got screwed up during the valve surgery, but that was in an operating theater under different conditions suited for it.)
So we asked the next logical question: What were the odds of that occurring?
About 20%.
Eep. And "oh, crap." Yes, being a glass-half-full sort of person, I saw that that meant an 80% chance of nothing bad happening. Still, I had higher odds of dying than of picking a particular soda can from a six-pack while blindfolded.
What's more, I'd be conscious and aware as it was happening.
Well, if that doesn't get you thinking...
One of the notions I've written about last year's experience is that there were entire weeks during which I could have died, and nearly did so, without my ever knowing it. The difference between being unconscious and gone is what, subjectively? It's not an everyday realization, although it's an occurrence that happens to people all the time for all sorts of reasons. But having the notion moved from the abstract to the very real and personal does adjust one's outlook on ... well, just about everything.
Now here I was going into a situation where not only were the odds of my dying significantly greater than my normal everyday statistics, this time I'd know about it as it was happening -- and I'd be too sedated to respond physically much beyond moving my eyes as I watched whatever the doctors and staff would do in such a situation.
Fortunately, whatever concerns I might have had during the procedure re the shuffling off of mortal coils or six-pack odds or whatever, the sleepy-happy drugs did a fine job of keeping them tamped down.
Now, obviously, all that was academic. It went well. There will be check-ups and follow-up clinic visits, of course, to make sure everything is working as it should, and I'll be on a blood-thinner regimen for a while until my natural tissue protects the "invader" stainless steel stent. Fine. I'm here at home on the couch typing away to you, and soon Elizabeth and I and Kai will take a walk (a test drive, I suppose) to a nice lunch under a gorgeous blue-sky day, on our 15th anniversary.
And with that I end the tale. Thank you again, all of you who shared it with us and helped us through it. Your value is beyond price. Sorry to put you through all that.
I think now I'll write that comedy I've been putting off for a year or so.