Sommer's Posts

Prayers for the past 7 months of easy breathing, a calm heart, and sound mind have become less frequent. I am feeling so much better than even last month. It is AMAZING. I am even starting to get use to the sound of my ticking heart. I try to predict my INR by how loud the sound is, but I'm wrong more than I am right. Encouragement to my fellow heart warriors that are gearing up for surgery or just out of surgery: things do get better! I spent so much time in the beginning counting the days- thinking that I should be feeling better because it has been 2 weeks, then 4 weeks, 2 months, 4 months etc. It wasn't until recently that I realized that I should have focused on how well I was doing making the days count instead of counting the days. Doing the small things until I could do bigger things... learning to crawl before walking so to speak. I'm not 100%. I am closer than I have ever been, though. The only grief I deal with now is keeping my INR high enough. I am on 10 mg's x's 5 days and 12.5 mg's x's 2 days a week and still continue to run low on my INR. I am a big green eater, and it has been a struggle removing these from my diet. The plan is too get a therapeutic INR and then I can add back greens slowly. Unfortunately, even with a very low Vit. K diet I rarely test between 2-3. The migraines continue to frequent me daily. I am able to control the pain for the most part with Tylenol, but I have about 3 a month that hit hard and are debilitating. Hope everyone is doing well with their recovery!

I have decided to pick up journaling on here and maybe connect with a few people that are sharing similar experiences. I have a learned and observed a few things along the way that could be most useful to anyone gearing up or going through recovery. Let me start with that I am a very literal person and take everything as it is being said to me. Sometimes I am asked by my husband what the color is in the sky in my world, because my reality tends to be way off! Like with OHS. What I heard about OHS vs. what was really meant... 1. YOU WILL FEEL LIKE A TOTALLY DIFFERENT PERSON. - Does not mean right out of the shoot. Not even on day 2, 2 weeks, or even 12 weeks. What I can say is that each and every week I felt stronger than the week before. 2. OHS IS NOT THAT BAD AS FAR AS PAIN GOES. - Does not mean that it doesn't come with pain. It is painful, your chest is cut open. And, as the OHS RN explained to me prior to surgery, the younger you are the more painful it is. Yet, I still went into surgery thinking that I would need something to pass my time after surgery with the few days that I would be spending in the hospital. My sky was seriously a lovely lavender on the days I thought this. That wise Open Heart Nurse also told me that as time goes by, you will forget about how painful it was. I'm 14 weeks out, and this is true. I have to say that for me, I didn't receive Morphine or even a hydrocodone until the following morning of my surgery. My stomach took a really long time to wake up, and so anything that made it down came immediately back up. And, I declined the morphine for being afraid of being made sick. I had IV Tylenol and a strong NSAID. Even with just those medications, about 12 hours later I was ready to sit up in bed and call my husband and tell him that I was okay. He had visited at every visiting hour, but he didn't see me in my glory. I was up and walking before 24 hours of the surgery. That is what people need to hold on too. I also need to add, that I was awake at about an hour and half post surgery and extubated around the 2nd hour. I should have just slept, but I was telling myself to wake up and breath. It would have been ok to sleep a little longer. ;) 3. THE HARDEST PART IS THE WAIT FOR SURGERY. - This one is difficult for me. The PTSD that I have from the months of worrying about surgery has stuck with me. I am so happy that this surgery is behind me, but I also wonder what if I had waited just a while longer. Recovery is really difficult and emotional. There are so many questions about what is normal and not normal. And, really the best advise comes from people that have actually had the surgery. There are text book answers that the doctors have read about, but then there is the intimate details that they can't possibly know unless having went through the process. Like, what it actually feels like on the inside to go through this life changing experience. To be continued....Time for cardiac rehab. My most favorite part of recovery.