Adjusting & Assessing

The onslaught of paperwork, appointments and details started the moment I said "yes" to the August 5 surgery date. Even though it was already 3:30 in the afternoon, Janice wanted me to hit the labs for blood work and an x-ray before leaving. I couldn't do it. The commitment for surgery was made, but I needed time to process. Time to second-guess. Time to worry. Time to really commit within my own mind to the path that I'd just agreed to.

Thursday and Friday were a whirlwind. I returned to the hospital for labs and the x-ray in the morning and I managed to get an appointment with my dentist in the afternoon for a cleaning and surgical endorsement. Both were preps for the ultimate surgery. Periodontal infections can lead to infection in the heart, especially with artificial valves. So the surgical team wanted to make sure that I had a clean bill of health from my dentist before moving forward.

Friday brought something of a warm up for the main event in the form of an angiogram. Here they insert a catheter in the femoral artery in your groin so that they can inject dye near the heart and inspect your cardiac arteries for blockages. They can also alleviate blockages by inserting stents into those arteries if need be--a procedure that has eliminated most bypass surgery. In my case, this was a pre-surgical precaution: if there were blockages and weakness in the heart, they wanted to know that in advance. Of course for me, if they found blockages, they'd probably just slap a bypass in while they had me open for the aorta/valve repair. (A two-for-one-deal, I guess.)

Because it is an invasive procedure, they prepare the patient in much the same way as they do for surgery: gown, shaving, IV line--all done in a special hospital-room-for-the-day. When it was time for the procedure, I made the trip flat on my back in bed, rolled down the hall and up the elevator. Afterwards, there were several hours of recovery--not from anything related to the heart, but to make sure that the puncture to the femoral artery closed up and wouldn't start bleeding uncontrollably.

Overall I fared well, and apparently my cardiac arteries passed the test. I seem to remember the doctor (not McCarthy, but a cardiology Fellow, Dr. Rapp) saying that everything looked fine while I was in the cath lab, although I was somewhat sedated at the time. Unfortunately when it came time for discharge, Dr. Rapp wasn't available so I didn't really get a full report on the state of my arteries.

I arrived home Friday night relieved. Part of the relief was that I had cleared all the necessary hurdles to proceed with surgery on Tuesday. But I was also relieved that the whirlwind of office visits and medical practitioners of every stripe was scheduled for a lull. From Tuesday to Friday, I was poked, prodded and probed from my teeth to my toes. I know my way around hospitals and I've certainly found that both the facilities and the people are as nice as they can be. But despite that, I was well ready for a rest and a few days that didn't involve anyone in a cotton garment with "Northwestern" embroidered above the pocket.