My First 24 Hours with Dan after his open heart surgery

This is me, Vicky, the other half of Dan and Vicky.

I have had a very hard time writing this.  It is an awful time of our life and a very wonderful time.  It is life, real living, and staying alive.  This is my story about the first 24 hours when Dan, my love, got his new pieces for his heart.       

I had been here before, in a way.  The hospital sounds and the smell on my hands from disinfectant flashed me back to a time in my life when my sister had surgery for ovarian cancer, and I lived in her hospital room with her for three days.  It was all so familiar, but this time it is my husband, the love of my life, on the hospital bed.

He is not moving, there is no indication that he is alive, except for his chest rising and falling.  But he is not breathing.  His chest moves only because the breathing tube is sending air into his body.  I hear monitors beeping and watch them endlessly draw lines with random bumps and hills. I do not leave his room.  I stay beside my husband watching his face, the rise and fall of his chest, and the monitors that are charting his heart beat, blood pressure, and oxygen level.

The four hour surgery is over, and Dan is in the ICU.  It is only 5 hours since surgery started and I am by his side, watching over him, willing him to breathe.

I will watching every breath of his, like this, for another six or seven hours.

There are numerous IV lines entering my love's body through his arm and his neck. They too are keeping him alive with a constant flow of liquid and medicines.  And then I see a sign, "Temporary Pacemaker", and realize that the RN that is monitoring all this equipment is working my husband's body like a video game to keep him alive.  When his heart slows down she speeds it up with the pacemaker, when oxygen is low she increases the flow, blood pressure too low or high she increases the appropriate drug going through the needle in his neck.  This RN, along with all the machines and drugs, is keeping my Dan alive.  She is also concerned with my comfort and explains what is happening from moment to moment and how to read the monitors.

And this RN lets me sit next to Dan and lets me talk to my husband.  She and I are spending the night here with Dan.  I'm not mentioning her name because I don't know how to contact her for permission.  So I am using "The RN," but she's not just the "RN" for either Dan or me.  She is in charge of the lifeline, doing a masterful job. 

I talk to him constantly, telling him I am here, that he is alive and that he kept his promise to me, that his coloring is good, and that I will be the first thing he sees when he wakes up!  I tell him everything the doctor said about his surgery and about Jessica and Jules staying with me all morning and afternoon and keeping me sane.  I talk on and on even though I have been told that he can't hear me and won't remember.  I know Dan and I know he can hear me and I don't care if he remembers what I say.  I know that he will live and start breathing on his own if I stay next to him and keep talking to him.

But deep inside me I also know that he may die.  That something inside his body may break or just stop working and he is too fragile at this time to live if this happens.  I talk to him and watch him and keep this unthinkable thought at bay.  I am afraid that if I let this thought surface, it may have power.  So I watch him breathing and talk to my love.

After several hours the doctor and RN say that Dan has to wake up and start breathing on his own.  But he is unresponsive.  They give him drugs to wake him up and still an hour later the breathing tube is what is keeping him alive.  He is not breathing on his own.

Suddenly Dan reaches for the breathing tube that is down his throat, and I grab his hand and tell him that he has to leave the tube alone and start breathing, take a breath.  He falls back into his drug induced coma and I help to strap his hand down so he can't pull out the tube.  But I talk to him, again telling him that he kept his promise, that I am here, explain why the tube is in his throat, ask him to start breathing, plead with him to start breathing. The RN tells him to breath.  I gently touch his forehead.  Dan gasps for air and his eyes briefly flutter open and he looks at me.  He is breathing!!!!

An RN arrives whose job is to remove the breathing tube.  Dan is breathing on his own but seems asleep.  I watch him breathing, his chest moving, and hold his hand, and am joyous inside.  Dan is breathing!

Much later I feel his body slightly shift.  He opens his eyes, looks at me, and mutters hoarsely,  "Hi baby."

The RN starts an assessment of Dan's mental state.  He does not know the month or year, but does know he is in the hospital, and when she asks why he is in the hospital he says, "to get a new heart." Then the RN asks if he know who the woman is who is next to him, and he looks at me and mumbles, "my treasure, my wife."

It is hours later and the doctors say that Dan should sit up sometime tonight and dangle his feet over the side of his bed.  He is still drifting in and out of "sleep" or consciousness.  No one believes that Dan will "dangle" tonight, but they keep asking if he wants to "dangle" now.  I can tell that he is becoming more my Dan because he starts to grin when the RN (in all seriousness) asks, "do you want to dangle?"

Dan asks if he is supposed to sit up and when he hears that the doctors want him to, he says OK he will sit up.  And with some help,  he sits up and dangles his feet.  But that is not enough for Dan, because now he wants to stand up.  So up he goes, leaning forward and using his special red "heart pillow."  I am taking pictures, in awe of my husband. Standing is not enough for him, he now wants to walk, but I can see his blood pressure is dropping rapidly and so can the RN, so he is told to wait until tomorrow to walk.  Dan begins to shuffle in place, saying, "see, I can walk".

It is 10:30 p.m. and Dan is (sort of) walking in place.  Just 14-1/2 hours ago surgery started. The doctors had put him on a heart and lung machine, deflated his lungs, and replaced his aortic root and aorta valve, restarted his heart, inflated his lungs, and had him on a breathing tube.  He went to "sleep" easily, but was hard to "wake" up.  And now he wants to walk, just over 14 hours later.  My amazing Dan!  Of course the pain has not set in yet like it will later.

All night long he sleeps restlessly.  He has on an oxygen mask and I can hear the oxygen flowing in as he breathes.  I sit beside Dan and watch him breathing, watch his blood pressure, oxygen level, heart rate and I call the nurse when any of the monitors appear abnormal.  I hold his hand and watch my husband sleep and breathe.  Every time he wakes up he asks what the surgeon had said, how surgery went, and I tell him all that had happened this first day and night after surgery.  He does not remember any of this.

Morning has broken.  Dan is alive, 24 hours later!

Our goal is to do the STP next year, in July of 2019.  And as he lay "sleeping" earlier that evening, with the breathing tube, I told him he had done the first step to ride the STP:   He had made it through surgery and has a new heart.  Now his next step is to start breathing, and he did this.  I know that Dan heard me, that he knew I was with him, beside him, and that he started breathing for me, for us.