Ben's Journal

Yesterday was 2 weeks since surgery and 10 days at home. Recovery is going very well, walking 4 times a day for 15 minutes, I’m back to my baseline for every breath on the spirometer, and my appetite is mostly back to normal. I’m starting to get back into a normal-ish sleeping pattern also, just shifted by a couple hours. One thing I noticed last night and tonight was a little blood leaking from the center of my incision, and tonight I can see it’s starting to open up a little. No external stitches or staples, just the glue stuff. I’m going to call the surgeon first thing in the morning, but I was wondering if anyone has had this happen and what, if anything, was done? I’ve had a couple other surgeries, but never had this happen at an incision site.

I’m back! The tricuspid valve repair was not working, despite trying 2 different times, so I ended up with a porcine valve. Overall I was in surgery for a bit over 8 hours, spent less than 24 hours in ICU, and I’ve been in the cardiac care unit for 3 nights. It sounds like I’ll be going home today or tomorrow, but I’ve been up walking, got cleared by the occupational and physical therapy folks. I’m very happy to be on the other side of this surgery, and happy about how good I feel 4 days out.

Yesterday my wife and I were on the way to the hospital to have the TEE and heart cath stuff done when we got a phone call that my surgery was rescheduled for July 13th. We were both happy to hear that, waiting 2 weeks seems better than waiting a month. All the tests went well yesterday, the doctor said he could barely get my heart to go into A-fib, which he said is promising for post surgery recovery, less of a chance of that occurring, though he said it’s still possible.

I got surgery scheduled for July 30th! I have a heart catheter to do an EP study and a coronary artery assessment on Thursday, along with a TEE, then a consult with the surgeon on July 1st. There’s a chance that my surgery could move up, the scheduler said Covid is still causing reschedules and cancellations. Post surgery they said I can have 1 adult visitor per day while I’m in the hospital. I’ve been mentally preparing myself and need to prepare some friends for no visitors once I get home, my area still has relatively few Covid cases, but I’m kind of expecting the recommendation to be to not have visitors at home. Either way, I’m very excited to have it scheduled finally, even if it’s still a month out. I’m sure it will go by fast.

My consult with the surgeon was rescheduled because my cath procedures still haven’t been scheduled, they’re hoping one of the cath specialists can get mine done in April. The heart cath studies and the surgery will all depend on where we’re at with Covid-19 of course, my surgeon’s assistant said they’re evaluating all cases and they may be postponing surgeries that are non-urgent, but she was’t sure where I would fall in that urgent/non-urgent spectrum, but she said they didn’t want heart patients in the hospital if they had a lot of Covid-19 patients because if heart patients get it, “it’s going to be bad”. So we’ll see what happens, I was wanting to get the surgery done as soon as I could, but now I’m probably OK with waiting a bit for things to calm down a bit.

I have a consult scheduled with the surgeon for March 18. Still waiting on an EP study, TEE, and coronary assessment to be scheduled, but the surgeon’s assistant said as soon as I get that scheduled to call and we’ll get the surgery scheduled. For some reason that made it more real than it has been, I think. My cardiologist said the EP doc in his group is pretty booked, so we’re waiting to see if he can squeeze me in, and if not I’ll get something scheduled with another doctor that can do it.