Today marks three weeks out from open heart surgery.
I'm amazed at the body's resilience. I still have many weeks until I am healed, and some challenges until that time, but it is mind-boggling that someone can feel as good as I do after only three weeks after being torn apart as I was, much less just simply survive this type of operation.
Make no mistake: I experience a lot of discomfort and at times pain. And feeling good comes and goes, alternating with being very tired.
I should have, but didn't, realize that there is another stage to this recovery, in addition to healing my heart and healing my sternum.
That stage is the 'what medications will I have to be on for the rest of my life' stage. That's the one I am in now.
Right now I am taking a blood thinner, a statin to reduce cholesterol (which is already low), and a medication to modulate my heart rate.
That's in addition to some prescribed over-the-counter medications.
The medicines are designed to prevent blood clots, which means to prevent strokes. How many of them I will need to take for how long is to be determined. I hope none of them, but we will adjust to whatever is needed. Small price to pay for living.
Although I have been told by doctors that red wine doesn't interfere with these medicines, I have decided to forego alcohol until my system becomes stable, however long that might be. This means none of my precious Chianti. Ouch. With all of my medicines my liver is also working overtime, so it seems best to cut it some slack.
I'm not even sure whether some amount of red wine might help--I just don't know and count on my cardiologist for this information.
We do medications twice a day. When we do that I am reminded of my watching my parents carefully taking their medicines. We too are very careful. We have a list, we don't do anything else at that time which could cause a distraction, Vicky hands me the pills (child tamper proof bottles are also post-open-heart-surgery proof bottles), and we both read the label out loud before I take any. After I take one, she moves it to the "taken" container. No mistakes allowed.
Our plan is to take everything precisely as prescribed so the cardiologist will not have to guess whether a certain reaction I am having or not having is due to the medicine or because of not taking the medicine correctly.
And not taking one's prescribed medicines is a huge problem for physicians, with some studies indicating 50% of patients with serious illness are not compliant with their medication prescription. Here are some other facts, stolen from an on-line article:
-Approximately
125,000 people with treatable ailments die each year in the USA because
they do not take their medication properly.
-Fourteen to 21% of patients never fill their original
prescriptions.
-Sixty percent of all patients cannot identify their
own medications.
-Thirty to
50% of all patients ignore or otherwise compromise instructions concerning
their medication.
-Approximately
one fourth of all nursing home admissions are related to improper self-administration
of medicine.
-Twelve to
20% of patients take other people's medicines.
-Hospital
costs due to patient noncompliance are estimated at $8.5 billion annually.
OK. What gives? Actually, nobody knows. Some factors have been identified (e.g., understandably more difficult for the very elderly; sometimes the cost is prohibitive), but frankly nobody knows for the majority of cases. People just don't do it right a whopping percentage of the time. I can't wrap my brain around this---not taking medicines that can keep you alive? I remember reading, years ago, about a form of childhood leukemia that was something like 97% curable if medicines were given to the children appropriately. But a huge percentage of parents were non-compliant with the medicine regime.
Again, I ask, what gives?
It's been three weeks now and I have not missed a pill. If it is prescribed, I take it.
Not only that, but I do a twice-daily "systems check." I take my blood pressure (cuffs are very inexpensive), pulse, temperature, weight, and amount of air I can suck through my little gizmo that is designed to inflate my lung sacs.
Since pain pills are something that is individually determined, we keep records, detailed ones, of the time of the day I take my acetaminophen. We know, to the mg, the amount of pain medicine I have taken since discharge.
Be sloppy about getting oil changes in your car, if you have some unmet need to be sloppy, but not about medicines.
I just went through hell with this surgery, fear, pain and all of the rest. And to then not take medicines that are prescribed is unthinkable.
There are times and places in one's lives to be obsessive-compulsive. This is a major time for that.
We have also been following the Doctor's "prescription" to "walk as much as can be tolerated." We have a park nearby with terrific trails (flat, wide, graveled, absence of roots to trip over), and we go there every day for our daily 'long walk." We also take shorter walks in our driveway, to spread the walking out over the day. Our long walk is now up to 3.5 miles. And for several days now I have exceeded 10000 steps. We will keep it at that level for a few days, and then kick it up a bit, which is what we have done since discharge. While walking I stop periodically and just stand still, to make sure everything is OK, that I'm not dizzy or anything.
It is flu season. I stay away from people. We wash our hands several times a day, we use an antiseptic hand cleaner, and I stay out of all stores except the grocery store. While in the grocery store I wear a mask. And all I do is help pick out a few groceries. When the cart is full I leave. I avoid people whenever possible.
The take-home point is that I, with Vicky's help, am being meticulous about every detail. Every.......single.......detail.
And 50% of people don't take medicines as prescribed.
I am also instructed not to lift anything over 10 pounds. I haven't lifted anything over 5 pounds, just to play it safe. I also avoid a lot of unnecessary stretching and bending. This means, of course, that more of this falls on Vicky, but that is fine with her. She knows my "job" is to heal, and hers is to make it so that can happen. She happily has taken on more during this period of our lives. But I have too---I had this surgery to give us more years together. Team effort. Go team!
There is so much that seems out of our control, but these things are within our control.
During the surgery and while recuperating at Virginia Mason I expected that every professional we dealt with was obsessively meticulous. And it is clear they were. There is a reason for that level of checking/double-checking/etc. So we are following their model while at home.
If something goes wrong now, and it still could, I will know that it is simply something beyond anyone's control. It won't be because of Virginia Mason, my doctors there, Vicky, or me. We have all done our best.
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