It's been a week, but, oh boy, it feels like a year

 Thursday March 25th, 5:30 am - Surgery day

The day started just like any other day...

HaHa! No way, it was surgery day! The day that I have been planning, prepping, and coordinating for the past 2.5 months was finally here!!!

I was able to get some good sleep the night before and I had a relaxing day on Wednesday with Kristen and my mom. A good homemade breakfast, coffee, long chats. It was all about relaxing before the big day.

It was actually a relief to have done everything possible that I could and now it was in the hands of the doctors.

Open heart surgery meant no food or water after 11:30 the night before and NOTHING the morning of. Ooof an empty stomach and anxiety, that's what's for breakfast...

Ooh free grippy socks at check-in!

First things first, I had to have one of many IV's placed in my arm. I told the nurse about my Vagel response to IV needles and how there's a good chance I may pass out. I asked for a cold, wet towel for my head before the needle went in and then....Boom it happened.

I hate when it happens. I get massive cold sweats, blood pressure drops, cold clammy hands and then I feel like I'm loosing grip on consciousness. 

Oh such fun at 6am!

The nurse didn't really take me seriously when I told him about the response, but as soon as things started heating up, he realized I wasn't joking. It was so bad that even Kristen got light headed and needed a moment away to catch up.

Killer IV's!

Thankfully the anesthesia team understood and said they could put the rest of the IV's in after I had passed out. God bless them! Woke up with 3 more and didn't have a recollection of them going in at all.

From what I've been told, surgery took a little over 6hrs for the procedure and although things went 'smoothly' there was one minor complication...

I had started bleeding out from an artery that runs behind the heart and around to the Left Ventricle. Apparently it got nicked and was a little tricky to get to stop because stopping it completely meant cutting off blood to the Left Ventricle and that has it's own set of issues.

Thankfully they were able to stop the bleeding and I did not need a transfusion of blood for what I had lost. (that made me happy as transfusions come with their own set of complications that I didn't want added to my plate)

Dr. Reece's rendering of my Aortic Valve

Friday morning, first thing. GET OUT OF BED

Other than that issue (which I was unaware of) the worst of it all was waking up still intubated and having to wait for an hour, yes an HOUR for the 'person' to come down and pull it from my lungs. Slipping in and out of consciousness but being woken up every time my eyes closed to maintain my own breathing was pure hell. Imagine waking up with a tube down your throat, people constantly keeping you awake and trying to breath on your own and not being able to tell them to F*^K OFF! I could here them say that they were waiting for someone to come down and it would be an hour before they could. 

All I wanted to tell them was to let me sleep until they were ready, but they kept me awake and I couldn't say anything to them. Nothing. I was trapped, and I kept gagging on the intubation tube as it felt like it was tickling the bottom of my lungs. 

Wake-up, gag, dry heave, fall back asleep, repeat. This went on for what felt like an eternity but the 'person' responsible for removing the tube finally came down and I was able to be rid of that damn tube and breath on my own.

Longest... Hour... Of...My... life...

Tubes on tubes on tubes on tubes

One thing they don't tell you up front, is that during the operation only your Right lungs is being fed oxygen as the Left lung cannot be moving up and down directly below your heart during surgery.

Makes perfect sense, but having that Left Lung deflated takes a LOT out of it's capacity and the lungs know when they're not breathing on their own as well as when they are deflated. They're never meant to be deflated so they get pissed!

My new best friend: the Inspiration Spirometer

That's where the Inspiration Spirometer comes into play. It helps open the lungs back up, clear out any lung butter and slowly increase the capacity during the days and weeks post-op. One of the couple of toys they sent me home with.

So it's now been a full week since the operation and I'm home. I was discharged late Tuesday evening after a battle between my doctors and my INR level.

INR is the International Normalized Ratio which is universally used to measure the 'thinness or thickness' of ones blood.

My doctors didn't want to discharge me until my INR was above 1.5 and I was hovering at 1.4 for 2 days. Finally saw the bump to 1.5 Tuesday eve and I was free! The plan is to get my INR up around 2.0 for life and since the medication is cumulative, it will be a slow process dialing it in over the next 3 months.

It was an interesting experience being in the hospital for 5 days. My longest ever as I've never spent even 1 night in a hospital, let alone 5.

It was a fairly 'simple' agenda each day. Get out of bed around 6am, move over to the reclining chair in my room, order some breakfast, hit the spirometer and read. Then around 10/11am I'd go for a walk (2-3 times a day) and just try to relax the rest of the day. Kristen would usually show up around 8/9am and I had the pleasure of both of my parents being able to spend some time there too. Since covid is amongst us, I was only allowed 2 visitors per day and honestly that was plenty. It's amazing how much energy a conversation or just paying attention to someone talking will take out of you. I'd nap each day, sometimes multiple times a day and let the healing process do it's thing.

Couldn't have done it without you!

Daily walks, here with Justin, one of the many badass nurses taking care of me

The nurses that I had taking care of me were some of the best and they were clearly elated to be dealing with someone who wasn't their 'normal' patient. I was able to get myself to the bathroom on my own (they showed me how to unhook the monitor for mobile use) and I was allowed to order foods most people cannot have so early in recovery. I was able to sit up and get out of bed on day 1 without assistance (The 6P's payed off - Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance!)

Everything I had done leading up to the operation was paying off ten-fold and I was checking off the required boxes (to be discharged) each day without issue. Kristen was able to bring me food for lunch/dinner and that diet mostly consisted of TACO'S! 

Haha, fruit in the mornings and tacos for the evening. It was hard finding something to get excited about, food wise, but some local tacos joints here in Colorado made it all better and I was getting my nutrients without too much trouble.

Not sure if you can tell, but I am super HAPPY!

Since returning home from the Hospital, it's been a roller coaster of energy (or lack thereof) and emotions. I was prepped by many medical staff about the high's and low's of recovery and I thought I was ready, but let me tell you, it aint' easy.

I'm just taking each day as it comes and riding the high's out and dealing with the low's. 

Mentally it's hard to have a brain that's ready to go and a body that say's no, no, no! But I'm dealing with it and I have a great support group with my parents and Kristen to help me remember that I just went through a major operation and that things like this take time. Lots and lots of time to heal.

So glad to have been here, SO glad to leave!

On Thursday of last week I had the first of many meetings with Debbie, who is an Anticoagulation specialist who I'll be directly dealing with for the next 3 months, multiple times a week to dial in my INR as I get back to eating a normal diet.

I want you to know that blood thinners are NOT the end of the world! Not one single person I've dealt with has told me that I cannot eat this, or cannot drink that. The old mindset of having to cut out Vitamin K rich foods has passed. These days you eat what you eat and they'll adjust the Warfarin (blood thinner) to your diet and lifestyle. It's amazing.

So many people (myself included early on) are hung up on blood thinners and the thinking that you cannot get back to an adventurous lifestyle and that you have to be on a strict diet regimen. That's simply not the case anymore.

I'll be getting an at home INR testing unit soon so that I can monitor my own INR numbers and check them against the numbers that Debbie get's from my visits to make sure everything is copacetic. 

It'll be a process, but it's a process that I was ok with dealing with. Hell, a couple tweaks here and some minor changes there to my lifestyle and I hopefully will never have to go through OHS again! 

That makes me happy as OHS is such a big life disruption, that I'll gladly deal with a mechanical valve and blood thinners vs. waking up from OHS knowing that with a tissue valve, it would be only a matter of years before it would need replacing.

Post-op visit with my PCP who initially got me started down this road.
Thanks Dr. Schultz, you may have saved my life!

I've got my first of many Cardiac Rehab appointments scheduled for next Wednesday (13 days post-op) and I'm looking forward to rebuilding.

I still have another 4-5 weeks to let the sternum heal before I can get crazy with exercise and such, but we'll start to get the cardio built back in and go from there.

I've been walking between .5 and .75 miles each day and over the last 5 days I have managed to rack up 3.5, which is just plain awesome. Not awesome for a guy who would regularly ride 60+ days, but still it's awesome to get moving, breath some fresh air and start rebuilding what I can.

I'll post more as things progress, but HUGE thanks to all of you who read this far and have followed along during the journey. I sincerely appreciate the text's, FB comments, and general outpouring of love I have felt.

Because I truly do feel it and I love you all as well!

-Joe