Today’s #1 goal was to marshall the energy and brainpower to convey how the initial post-hospital phase of open heart surgery recovery is going.  (Long story short: it’s freaking exhausting!) On Wednesday I mark four weeks since my surgery to replace a failing aortic valve.  It also will be 18 days since I came home.

In a weird way, time has flown.  For that I can be thankful, because this recovery business is no piece of cake, physically or mentally.  Fortunately so many friends and family members have rallied to my side that everything has been as easy as possible! 

Starting with my return home.  My eldest daughter Lauren arrived from Texas literally hours before I was discharged from University of Washington Medical Center.  She, Bruce and son Josh helped pack me up and deliver me home, where the initial challenge was successfully tackled:  keep Zoe and Zayna from knocking me over and massacring me with kisses!  As you may know we have two energetic three-year-old Australian Shepherds, who are accustomed to tons of rough housing and tug-of-war play with me! 

We did a quick enforcer on sit/stay and down, and these two adopted their behavior like champs!  Aussies are world class “room readers” so it didn’t take a minute for them to realize that change was afoot with Dad! They sat at a distance, respectfully, and sized me up.  Then adjusted their energy levels around me accordingly. (It helps that I no longer instigate them, at least until I get medical clearance for upper body movement!)

Our dear friend Richelle got a meal train up and running in record time, and we were quickly set up to ease into this odd journey.  Well, I am not sure how ready Bruce could have been since everything was on his shoulders!  He has handled the many details of our life with class and organization, without a complaint.  I can only imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and he had to rely on me (yikes). 

Daze-y Days on Oxy and Going Cold Turkey

The initial week home was a race with the pill bottle!  I was sent home with 30 OxyContin, and no refill.  From the clear parting words of my discharge nurse, it was not an option that I would get more Oxys to ease the pain.  The script was 30 5 mg pills for (theoretically) 14 days.  I’m not great at math but that is one low dose Oxy for every 12 hours.

Hahahahahahahaha! Very funny, U Dub!

This was to be supplemented with up to 3,000 mg Tylenol each day, and a muscle relaxer every 8 hours if needed. 

Here’s the problem.  When you had a Sawzall to your sternum a week earlier, this simply is not a realistic pain management approach!  Only in the first hour of the Oxy + Tylenol did my pain subside to a 2 or 3.  By hour 5, I wanted to scream!  I tried various management approaches, from trying to skip the Oxy at bedtime to taking more Tylenol at one time than was probably warranted. 

In the hospital, the pain management goal quite overtly was to minimize pain to the lowest threshold.  I was regularly given 10 mg every six hours.  Then, you are ejected home and forced to manage on 5 mg every 12 hours.

The strictly honest discharge instructions would have been:  Bolster for takeoff, because you will need to rapidly adjust to a pain level of 4 to 6 for most of the next 30 (?) days. Interspersed with a few hours of 2-3. 

Don’t get me wrong: I am no pill popper, nor do I want to still be on Oxy.  My care team’s approach is clinically sound, and the incalculable ravages of opioid overuse are a sick legacy from which our citizens may never recover.  

But surely there is a middle way! I have tried meditation with some decent results (and learned that I can successfully prompt a bowel movement through a “poop meditation”!)

Most of each day, though, I feel low level crappy.  My chest and shoulders ache, and my head is pretty foggy! If there is a corner to turn, I have not found it.  But we are not yet at one month so hope springs eternal. 

On the positive side, I am sleeping really well, waking 1.5 miles a day, and my blood pressure is staying around 110/80, with resting pulse around 75.  (When I first came home, my pulse never dropped below 85, and often was 90 when I would lie down to sleep.  Which is surreal for me, as most of my life my resting heart rate was about 60,  dropping to 48 during sleep!)

And the icing on the cake:  This week has been spent resting on Whidbey Island with Bruce’s family.  This is a very special place for us and while it sucks balls to not be out in the water, it’s very peaceful to take in the beautiful summer hues of the Olympics and the Puget Sound from our windows. And spending time with our amazing family.