A Busy Month Part 2: The 'Fun' Begins

I had no visitors on the day before surgery, but I still had 'tasks' to keep me occupied. I was given a couple of razors and told that I needed to shave my chest. Shave my chest! I'd had previous thoracic surgery 20-odd years ago and had had to shave my chest then. It had taken 20-odd years to grow the 17 hairs that I had, and here I was being instructed to shave them off. Heartbroken. It was also suggested that I shave my arms as there was a possibility that veins would be taken from them, so this I duly did.

When I went to bed that evening, inevitably, I found it difficult to sleep with lots going on inside my head. My cunning plan had been that once I had a date for surgery, I would make DVDs for all my 'significant others' in which I would take the opportunity to say goodbye should I not survive the surgery. However, because of the nature of my admission, I never had that opportunity; so much of the night before my surgery was spent writing 'just in case' text messages to friends and family, which I stored to be sent the following morning. The problem was that with the DVDs, they would only come to light if I did kick the bucket, whereas the texts were read no matter what.

The most difficult of these were to m'Julie, because a text message is such an inadequate way to say what you feel, and to my eldest Son, for the same reason, but also because we had had a bit of a falling out at the start of the year and everything was not completely cleared between us.

I was woken bright and early, had my second shower in the antiseptic stuff, sent the text messages and handed over all my kit for storage until after the surgery. Then it was the wait for theatre. I'd been told that I'd be going at about 7am, but it wasn't until 7.45 that I did go, after being visited by the anaesthetist, whom I'd worked with just a couple of years ago when she'd been at the hospital where I work.

The trip down to theatre was the start of what was to be, for me at least, a fairly sketchy few days. The first surprise was that the theatre didn't have an anaesthetic room, and I was wheeled straight into the (bloody freezing when you're just wearing a gown!) theatre.

Now, this was the start of the sketchy bit. A week later, I was told by the anaesthetist that as she'd been putting in lines etc, we'd had long conversations about the hospital where I work among other things. However, my final memory is her saying to me 'I'm just going to give you a little bit of midazolam.'

My next, very vague memory, is of my eldest son, Alec, and his friend Casper, although at the time I was convinced that I'd dreamt it, sitting out at various points and having a CPAP mask on. In fact, I was to be CPAP dependent for the next week or so.

CPAP (Continuous Positive Airways Pressure) is often used by people who suffer from sleep apnoea. In these circumstances, it is a small mask that fits over the nose and is worn when the sufferer is asleep. It delivers air under pressure to ensure that the airways stay open when the person is asleep.

In my case, because of previous treatments and the smoking, my lungs are what is technically known as 'buggered'. Therefore, immediately post-op, I wasn't able to maintain my oxygen levels. The CPAP used in hospital covers most of the face and is applied very tightly, so as to force the oxygen in and keep the alveoli in the lungs open to 'facilitate gaseous exchange'.

Although it’s quite uncomfortable, it is a better option than the alternative (hypoxia, confusion, possibly death).

I did find out that , because of the previous radiotherapy, rather than using the mammary arteries, as planned, they'd only been able to use one, the other being too badly damaged, and so I had had leg veins taken from my left leg. I also found out that rather than having two vein grafts , as expected, I'd needed four.

The day after the surgery I was moved from the cardiac recovery to the ward's high dependency unit. I continued on the CPAP, but there were more rest periods where I was just on 'ordinary' oxygen.

These breaks gave people such as the physiotherapists the opportunity to visit and inflict their own particular brand of sadism.

Unfortunately, it was also very tiring, so the day after arriving in the HDU, when I was visited by m'Julie, Hx and my friend Jeremy, I was not the greatest host in the world, falling asleep constantly the whole time that each of them was there.

However, it was just as well I did sleep as that night, directly opposite, the patient arrested. Now that was difficult. I could hear what was going on and knew that the person that was actually running the arrest didn't actually have a clue what they were doing. Tempting though it was to jump out of bed and take over, I had to lie there and pretend to be asleep.

On the Friday, I was assessed by the physio and deemed fit enough to move from the HDU to the main ward. So I was moved. It was then a case of being geared up for discharge over the weekend. I was sent to x-ray, because there was a possibility of a small pleural collection (x-ray confirmed this) and attended the pre-discharge talk given by the Cardiac Rehabilitation nurses.

So having been all geared up for discharge, things then went a bit awry the following morning, when I woke up at 0530. I knew that my temperature was sky high and I was struggling for breath. I told one of the HCAs, who performed observations that showed that my blood pressure was low, my oxygen saturation was 83% (normal = 96-100%) and my temperature was 38.7 (normal = 37). However, rather than getting a trained nurse, she informed me that she intended to leave it for an hour or so and would re-check it. In the end I had to put my Charge Nurse head on and order her, quite forcibly, to get a staff nurse.

Much of that Saturday was a blur. The doctors came, but seemed decidedly uninterested, until they saw me after I'd walked to the toilet and back and had gone mauve (not a good colour!), and then it all happened and I was rushed back into the HDU, CPAP'd, lines re-inserted etc.

Unfortunately, all this happened at the time that m'Julie, her daughter Hannah and her mum had come to visit, so although they were at the hospital for about 3 hours, they spent almost all that time waiting to see me whilst I was being sorted out.

Once the CPAP was back in place I did start to feel better and I felt quite a bit better on the Sunday, although I was still struggling to breathe at times. However, I received a visit from Alec, my eldest son, who informed me that he had a surprise. The surprise made me feel 100% better as it was my other son, Drew, and my daughter, Maggie, whom I hadn't seen since the week before I'd had the MI.

What I hadn't realised was that behind the scenes m'Julie and my friend Bruce had been in delicate negotiations with my ex-wife and, as a result, she had allowed Alec to bring his little brother and sister to the hospital to visit me. However, there was to be a payback, but more on that next time.