My AVR: Back Home! So, after a fairly momentous few days and weeks of planning, preparation, uncertainty, fear and elation. We arrive back home. All is surprisingly normal in truth. Nice to have lots of Get Well cards to open and to have a “welcome home” message on the light box!! How good does it feel to be home? In truth, I’m so glad to be back here and not in a box that anything else is a bonus. Perhaps not the thing to say, but for all concerned I think that has been an underlying concern for months now, so today just feels fab. Coupled with the fact I’m neither mad nor feeling bad, things feel pretty darned good.
Week One Back Home/ Week 2 Post Op Starts with me reading the excellent booklet that Blackpool Victoria Hospital (BVH) gave me at my pre-op appointment and that I had skim read, despite assuring my wife I had read it from cover to cover. I learnt a lot. And actually wished I had read it before I went in to hospital. Anyway, do the exercises, rest, be sensible, don’t lift anything heavier than a half-filled kettle, don’t push or pull stuff, be kind to furry animals and don’t swear out loud when you cough, or even worse get hiccoughs.
I’m not sleeping well at night despite being placed in a spare bedroom and having lots of pillows including the v-shaped one my mother-in-law used to swear by, and a memory foam one that guarantees a perfect night’s sleep or your money back as long as you return it by air freight to Shengzhen via Constantinople and deepest Antarctica.
What isn’t helping my night-time sleep pattern is that I’m still weeing with amazing frequency despite no longer being on diuretics.
I still feel surprisingly good overall though, and am doing my exercises, walking up and down stairs, moving around the house and venturing out into the garden like it is a forbidden world and I am only allowed a small taste. Catching up on my emails, I picked up on an urgent and slightly frantic email request from my successor at work about sorting some company legal issues. This I worked on, to the disbelief of my wife, but in truth, it was easier for me to sort it than to engage our lovely but expensive and slightly disengaged firm of accountants.
Saw my GP for my ‘Post-Op Discharge appointment’. He was very pleasant. Our surgery is no longer the ‘family GP with partners’ type of place it was years gone by. Today it is a multi-GP, multi-location (but soon to move to a ‘super health and wellbeing centre’), efficient bastion of the modern NHS. Consequently, I had never met him before.
He was both pleasant and efficient, open about needing to get up to speed with who I was and why I was there, but very caring and ensured that I felt had as much time as I needed to let him know how I was. Given that I feel fine and didn’t really need anything, it was a straightforward exercise. He wants me to have another blood test as I had one before my operation (a routine exercise unrelated to my up and coming procedure) and apparently it showed that I was mildly anaemic, so that is a trip marked down for next week as you can’t have too much fun all at once and I was due to have my drain sutures removed later that day. Obviously the removal of these was to take place at a different venue (given we operate a multi-location etc.etc.) but again a painless experience and a marker of progress towards normality.
I’ve been wearing a FitBit (other makes work equally as well if not better, but FitBit have been good to me) since my return home, so I can make some sort of judgements on how far I am walking etc. Learnt that going downstairs doesn’t count, which was disappointing but explained a lot about my previous poor scores. I am going to bed each afternoon after lunch, and find that I can sleep really well then. Also, I need that hour or so of respite from the stuff of daily life probably as much as my wife does from caring for me.
Week Two Back Home/Week 3 Post Op The gloves are off! I can leave the house and garden and explore the wider neighbourhood.
Like a puppy after its jabs, I’m raring to go! The deal is that I am accompanied by my wife (which in truth is rather comforting) and that we start sensibly, building up distances on a daily basis. This works well. By the end of the week we have done all the “flat/downhill most of the way” walks and started to include some inclines into the route. I’ve also got a ‘being at home’ routine better sorted. Just things like having my tablets placed in old takeaway boxes and marked up with when I need to take them, sounds simple, but made such a difference. My ability to remember basic routines and what I’ve done/not done is not so good. But at least I’m aware of this and able to take the appropriate action to remedy it. I am beginning to get used to wearing white thigh length ‘Elizabethan hose’ style support stockings, although not sure the neighbours all understand why I now appear to be wearing tights. Had an outing to have my blood test but as the clinic was overbooked we had to go to another location the next day. Benefits of multi-location centralisation of NHS services don’t you know. Have had visits from some very good friends including a couple of my former work colleagues, so beginning to feel more connected with the world. I also got to go out for a walk on my own, but only as far as the post office. I feel a bit like I’m on parole, but nice to feel cared for. Ah yes… also I have now mastered the art of putting my stockings on by myself. May sound like nothing, but trust me, this has been a big moment in all our lives.
Week Three Back Home/Week 4 Post Op Decided that I no longer needed morphine. That worked well. After just one day, I realised that I still do need more than paracetamol to keep on top of the soreness. I had a couple of interviews in the later part of the week. Knowing that I was about to become a retiree in April, I had earlier made an application to serve as a Magistrate in the Family Courts. Wearing a suit, shirt and tie on the hottest day of the year so far, after five weeks of mooching about in a tee shirt and shorts, and doing so wearing thigh length support stockings, whilst facing a fairly tough set of interviews and aptitude/comprehension/thinking process tests in quick succession, made for a warm return to the real world. We will see how I got on in due course!
My trip to Court for the interviews was also my first outing on a bus for some time and first solo venture beyond my immediate neighbourhood. Technically according to the BVH booklet that I have been using as my reference bible, accessing public transport is a treat for next week, but I was feeling confident about my chances of survival and it saved my wife lots of ferrying me about. More friends called to see me this week. It is good to see fresh faces and always improved by people who bring cake to go with their conversation. I have also been reminded that my rolled up towel is still my best friend and whilst coughing is bad, laughing also hurts, sneezing is to be avoided but hiccoughs are the work of the devil.
Week Four Back Home/ Week 5 Post Op Another milestone ticked off. I am now walking further with more challenging terrain included. Am up to nearly 3 miles a day now… sometimes more, sometimes less. I find I have had days where I felt I could do loads and then overdid things and it took two days to recover my strength. It really does seem to be all about pacing yourself and listening to your body. I still find an hour’s sleep in the afternoon pays dividends.
Had a visit from another of my former work colleagues. These visits from friends really brighten my day. A lesson for me for if ever I find myself on the other side of the fence. Been trying to do more but perhaps stretched things a bit as my chest scar has been weeping in a couple of places so have accepted I need to tone things down a bit.
Rang my consultant’s secretary as I still hadn’t heard about my 6 week check-up appointment. Also rang the cardiac rehab nurses as I hadn’t heard from them either. Both rang back within a day. I now have a date in the first week of August for my post-op clinic and it is at my local hospital so that is handy. Also when the cardiac nurses contacted me, they explained my referral hadn’t happened so were very apologetic (despite my sensing it was not their fault) and are getting me seen on the same day as my post-op clinic, so a busy day in August beckons but we are continuing to make progress.
Also saw my GP for a follow up to the blood tests that I repeated a few weeks ago. I am still anaemic and so he very clearly explained the protocols they follow in the case of 61 yr old men like me…basically an urgent 2 week referral for a colonoscopy to check for cancer. However, given I had just had fairly major surgery, been in receipt of all sorts of blood products and suffered some significant bleeding as a result of the operation, we settled on him giving me a rectal examination (no doubt a great start for both our Monday mornings) and me agreeing to do a poo test, start a course of iron tablets and to alert him if there was any notable change in my bowel habits. As we both noted, it would be more than sod’s law to have got to this point with my heart treatment only to find I had cancer. It was a quiet ride home.
Week Five Back Home /Week 6 Post Op The week is about to start and I checked my brilliant advice booklet from BVH. Apparently I should be “doing most of my normal day-to day activities by now. I can also wash and polish the car in stages but must not lift the bucket when it is full of water”. This is clearly advice written by someone who has never washed a car. I can also start ironing again. I feel as though my recovery is almost complete…
Anyway, enough for now… I do hope someone finds this meandering tale of my experiences useful. If you have just been diagnosed as needing a valve replacement or are about to have surgery, I wish you well. As many others have said more eloquently than me, the waiting is the worst part. I am sure you will be in a better place afterwards and be relieved and pleased like many of us who have posted on this site to wear the zipper scar!
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