Six weeks!....opening to Shangri La....or a panacea of a myth? This magical amount of time seems to be put forward as an idea of when people will start to get better in a variety of ways but has it been plucked out of thin air and is it backed up by research and actuality? Open to discussion I would suggest...and playing the devils advocate, is it there to give breathing space to hospitals and surgeons so that recent patients don't mither for that time?
On reading the handbook I was given at discharge (unfortunately the wrong number for the cardiac Centre....you get through to an exasperated Thoracic nurse!) it was full of information... mainly useful BUT item 24 in my eyes is totally irresponsible and puts unnecessary pressure on we men mainly....it reads' after six weeks(there it is again!!) YOU MAY VACUUM AGAIN!! ' Are they trying to make me relapse or what!!
In the same booklet it says 'after six weeks(!!) you may have sex again' I thought...good old NHS...thanks! So Wednesday just gone I had a shave and sat waiting...and lo and behold a knock on the door! Opened the door to a nice looking woman with a lanyard around her neck....aha I thought!.....unfortunately she was from the WWF trying to sign me up to help save the snow leopard! Oh well ...at least I'll get a cuddly toy out of it!
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Khartoum7
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Hi khartoum7. Your post did make me laugh and bless you for trying to pretend you know what a vacuum is - so cute to try! As to the other magic 6 week milestone all the best!
I think your sense of goodwill stand you in great stead for a speedy recovery. X
The usual advice from the NHS is that you can think about returning to work following open heart surgery (I presume that was your operation?) after eight weeks, but if you do a physical job you should probably take a couple of weeks more rest.
This isn't to say you'll feel like an olympic athlete after eight weeks, it's more to suggest that for most people, despite a few aches and pains, you're probably up to a commute and some light duties.
I also heard from a very experienced cardiac nurse that the thing that determines how well most open heart surgery patients feel is how diligent they are about their walking and breathing/coughing exercises in the first few weeks when they get home. Your lungs take a real beating during open heart surgery. As soon as the chest cavity is punctured the lungs collapse, and they then stay collapsed for the seven or eight hours of the operation. Fully reflating all the pockets of micro collapse is a big job, which is why you had to pass a breathing test before the operation, because if your lungs aren't up to it going into the operation then your chances of a decent recovery at the other end aren't great. The walking and breathing exercises are no walk in the park, and talking to people on the Cardio Rehab course it was sobering how few really tackled them with all the vigour necessary.
Full recovery, defined as feeling at least as good as you did before open heart surgery, can take up to a year for some people. The operation is pretty traumatic, if you've a strong stomach there are YouTube videos showing the process, the sternum is split apart with an electric saw, the ribcage is levered apart far wider than would ever happen in normal life, and the arms are twisted back to grant the surgeons easy access. This all leaves a massive amount of tendon, muscle and nerve damage that will take a long time to heal.
But around about six or eight weeks following my operation, despite feeling like I'd been fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson, I started to notice that something was profoundly better. I was breathing and sleeping better, I felt more alert and with a rediscovered vitality. Sure, I was sore and adjusting to the medication brought challenges, but I'd wake each day with a sense of eager anticipation. Each passing week saw the account tip further into the positive, until by the time I'd completed Cardio Rehab, about fifteen weeks or so following the bypass, I couldn't wait to join a gym and tackle some quite serious hill walks. Bottom line is that I felt ten or even twenty years younger, and for the past three years or more that sense of wellbeing has continued.
Comments on this forum make it clear that I'm not alone in this. For many of us a bypass operation has delivered a transformational new lease on life.
Of course, it's important to be realistic, we still have the same atherosclerosis that we had before the operation. And our risk of heart attack really hasn't been reduced all that much by a bypass (and virtually not at all by stents). However, we've been handed an amazing second chance, a heaven sent opportunity to slow our heart disease to a crawl and thereby gain many additional years of healthy, active life. But none of that's guaranteed, it's down to us to dig deep and fundamentally change our life styles and absolutely commit to work with our health care professionals to optimise our medication.
Long reply, but you get the point. Vigorous, active, healthy life is just so precious that it's worth all the hardship and sacrifice needed to get there. You'll have days when it really is tough going, but dig deep and grit your teeth, the prize justifies the price!
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