Post heart surgery day +18.

This is going so much slower than I would ever have anticipated.  I'm walking a couple hundred yards twice a day, and my legs are so weak.  I get back and almost invariably I am exhausted and take a nap.  I'm not seeing significant improvement in my strength or endurance.

I am not an easy patient for Jackie.  I am miserable much of the time, withdrawn into my own small world, trying to cope, and liable to snap at intrusions from the outside world.

My appetite is just about zero.  I must force myself to eat most of the time, and when I do eat, it's maybe ½ of what I would have eaten pre-surgery.  Nothing tastes good.  A couple of days ago, Jackie fixed tomato soup and grilled cheese/ham sandwiches, a favorite meal of mine.  If you had blindfolded me, I could not have identified the tomato soup.  My taste buds are very muted.  I'm wondering it is has to do with the meds I'm on?

Last night I tried doing without my meds for sleeping.  I have a narcotic painkiller prescribed for every six hours as needed, that I have been using when I go to bed to help me sleep, along with trazadone, a prescription antidepressant prescribed for a sleep aid, and OTC melatonin.  

I thought maybe the painkiller, and antidepressant might be contributing to my weakness or my screwed up taste buds, so I did not take them.  About 1 a.m. I did take a melatonin.  I can't really say that my sleep was much worse than without taking my prescriptions.

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. . . My breathing is getting very slowly better, just now I walked to the garage to get a package, and then walked outside to bring in a couple of pieces of firewood. . . I lay here gasping for breath, as if the room doesn't have enough air in it for my lungs.  I go through this awful feeling, numbers of times per day.  This will pass in a few minutes as opposed to the 15-30 minutes with far less exertion, in the days shortly following surgery, but still it takes getting used to, that a trip across the hall to the bathroom and back, requiring as much effort as climbing a sand dune.  I have a trainer stand for my road bike.  I'm considering getting that setup, to try to hasten my strength and breath recovery.  

Doing some reading online, the procedure I underwent is known as the Bentall procedure.  The Cleveland Clinic performs roughly 480 of these procedures per year. The Bentall procedure was invented by a British cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Hugh Henry Bentall alongside his colleague Dr. A. De Bono in 1968.  In it the aorta root, valve, and ascending aorta are all replaced with a mechanical or biological implant.  In my case this was a bovine tissue replacement, which doesn't last as long as a mechanical, but has the advantage of not requiring powerful anti-coagulants for the rest of your life.  Same as for the past 26 years since my first heart surgery,  I'll continue taking my baby aspirin a day,and that's it.

90-95% of biological Bentall replacements last longer than 10-12 years without surgical reintervention.  Reading more on the procedure, about 5% of Bentall patients have visual disturbances of the same symptoms as I'm experiencing.  My eyes are not focusing properly.  I had a neurologic and ophthalmic exams while at Cleveland with a CT scan of my brain, and no evidence was found of stroke.  Thankfully evidence was found of a brain. . . :)  My vision is slowly improving.  In the first few days after surgery, I had trouble reading my phone, or the clock on the wall.  This is very slowly getting better.  I was going to make an eye doctor appointment (my glasses are only a few months  old), but I've decided to hold off until things stabilize to see if I do indeed need a new eyeglass prescription.  

The kindnesses shown to me. . . to Jackie and I are overwhelming.  People have been so kind. . . family, friends, neighbors, our Pastor,church brothers and sisters have all been so loving and supportive in meals,doing tasks around the house here, words of encouragement, the many many prayers offered up on our behalf. . .  My wife Jackie deserves some kind of award.  I am by no means an ideal patient.  Much of the time I am miserable, and through that misery I don't buffer my snap reactions very well.  

This is quite the journey.  Beforehand, I completely underestimated the length and difficulty of it.  As I've said previously, I am being transformed. . . changed by this experience. . . change can be for the better or worse, depending on which path you follow from it.  I pray I come out of this more compassionate, loving, forgiving, patient. . . more like Christ. . . 

Thank You Lord. . . 

Help me God. . . 

<3

Dave