Some of you knew I was about to have surgery last week to correct a deteriorating aortic heart valve. I learned about it in 2004 and my cardiologists and I have been monitoring it since. (I always suspected my supervisor back at my old cruise line job in New Orleans aggravated the situation!) I don’t think word got out to everyone, so I just wanted to give you an update.

I live! I live!

I went in Tuesday morning, 2 December, at 5 a.m., and fortunately was given ample time to catch up on my sleep. The thoracic surgeon didn’t stitch me back together until after 4 p.m. (My apologies to anyone patiently waiting to use that operating room at the Fort Walton Beach Medical Center.) I first remember coming to close to midnight.

I had a sensational heart surgeon, Dr. Michael Sheridan. At his recommendation I opted for a titanium valve instead of tissue, because at my activity level, I would’ve worn out a tissue valve within 12 or 15 years and would face replacement surgery all over again, he explained. The titanium valve will outlast me. (But will it set off metal detectors at airports, I wonder?)

At Dr. Sheridan’s urging, the nurse in Cardio-Vascular ICU had me up and sitting in a chair by 10 a.m. the morning after surgery. After lunch that day, she came in my room and asked, “Are you ready for your walk?” Through thoughts still hazy from anesthesia, I had imagery of scenes from World War II films in which nurses in starched white uniforms wheeled people about the garden in wicker wheelchairs. No, the only wheeled conveyance in the lovely Nurse Amanda’s mind was a four-wheeled cart on which I’d cling for support.

Yep, I was up and walking less than 24 hours after open-heart surgery. I was dangling all sorts of tubes and wires, and two collection units for nasty bodily drainage fluids got to ride in the cart, but I was walking. Friday morning the tubes came out (preceded, at my insistence, by a warm, happy shot of morphine), after which I was tethered only to a bundle of monitor cables. I was told I could unplug myself and walk at will. I was also allowed to regain some dignity and wear my own lounge shorts, though I still had that humiliating hospital gown on top. If I had a visitor or other escort, I was allowed to leave the unit and walk the corridors.

(Amusingly, FWBMC rules prohibit patients ambulating the hallways unless they are draped by gowns on both sides. I guess there were complaints of bare, unattractive rumps shocking visitors!)

Saturday evening they moved me upstairs to Progressive Care, where I had a private room big enough to host a dance party in, and bigger halls to roam. My new monitor broadcast a signal to the nurses’ station, so I didn’t have to unplug myself before having a walk around. Sunday morning my dressings came off and I took my first full shower. I also saw my incision sites for the first time. There’s obviously a good reason there are no mirrors in the rooms in CVICU: patients would get a glimpse of their wounds and have further heart woes!

Sunday afternoon Dr. Sheridan came in my room as I was writing Christmas cards and said I could go home. I called my roommate Leon and told him, “Fetch the car!”

It is great to be home and enjoying the holidays. As I can’t lift more than ten pounds, nor reach, tug, climb ladders, etc., for the next two months or so, I get to supervise decorating the house. Leon’s sister had a tree cut down for us at a farm up near Andalusia, Ala., and I got some new ornaments to hang during my recent three-week trip to Germany, Sweden and France.

So…I am home, sleeping in my own little bed, and when I have pain, I pop a Lortab or two, which is “the good stuff,” I am assured. (I see it being hawked on the street all the time in the police reports I monitor for the paper.) That will explain last night’s peculiar dream in which a citizen mob was selling out of the back of my Land Rover European candies left behind by a bunch of party-goers whom I had given a lift up at LSU. I told you it was the good stuff!

I hope your Christmasses are going well. As I face mine with a new heart valve beating madly away and a recuperation aided by the thoughts and prayers of my friends, it sure drives home the need to focus on the more precious gifts we’ve been given, rather than the latest electronic geegaw. Two that pop in my mind are life itself, as well as the special bundle that showed up in a manger in Bethlehem a couple millenia ago. Please try to  keep the perspective correct.

And thank you for your support and prayers.

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