Post-Surgery Update

My second go-around with ablation therapy, to cure my atrial fibrillation, so far is a (guardedly optimistic) success. I won’t know for certain that I’m fully cured until 90 days out from the procedure. But compared to how I felt back in November when I first had the ablation done, this is a massively major improvement. Mental attitude plays a huge chunk of success in these things, and mine is excellent!

I’m taking the week off from work, taking it easy. I still get out of breath going up a flight of stairs, and it still hurts to take a deep breath. I slept on the couch last night to allow my long-suffering wife the night in bed, and kept waking up every two hours feeling like I was drowning, feeling like I had a load of bricks on my chest. I’d get up, walk around for a few minutes, feel fine, and go back to sleep. It’s all the tissue inside my heart healing.

I can eat and drink whatever I want, but obviously I’m going to avoid alcohol, and caffeine as much as possible. I was at the hospital on Monday for bloodwork, and my INR level (the amount of thinness of my blood) was 1.4, too low. So, I have to continue my lovenox injections (twice daily, still) and increase my coumadin intake. Once it gets to the safe zone between 2.0 and 2.5 I can stop giving myself injections. One thing they recommend is to keep your diet fairly consistent so as not to skew the INR level, so I’m not going vegan just yet.

As far as complications go, the first time around I had terrible complications with one of my incisions. When I tried to stand a few hours after coming out of surgery with a nurse’s assistance, I coughed, the wound opened, and blood splattered on the floor. She threw me down, called for assistance, patched me up and cleaned me up. The problem is with the amount of thinners in my bloodstream its difficult for the incision to scab up. It took two or three days for it to stop bleeding. It was not pretty.

This second time I was so surprised when I was up and walking at 10:30 pm on Friday night (I was under general aenesthesia from somewhere around 9 am to 5 pm). The next morning when my surgeon visited me and checked the incisions, he removed the bandages, saying they were closed up. Wow! I was walking around, sitting up, moving unrestricted. How we take for granted something simple as free movement! Back in November my legs were in immobilizers for a little over twelve hours and it was utter misery.

But I didn’t get off completely free this time. A minor complication, but an annoying one. I was discharged at 10 am on Saturday, and got home by 11. By 12, I was coughing persistently, coughing up mucus. Yellowish, brownish, and reddish – uh oh, blood. And I was coughing so hard I was fearful of rupturing an incision. And I couldn’t get any sleep, which by this point I was craving. My wife called my cardiologist, who called in a prescription for cough syrup with codeine, but it didn’t work and it was a wretched sleepless Saturday night. My surgeon called on Sunday morning, my wife explained my symptoms, and he called in a prescription for antibiotics. By Sunday afternoon my cough had stopped. It seems that, most likely, I caught an infection from the tube they place down my esophagus during the procedure.

My heart appears to be beating fine; I’ve had no explicit instances of erratic heartbeat, just heavy pounding when I exert myself. But I’m guardedly optimistic; I want an EKG to say that my heart is as good as new. Then I’ll know that all this was not in vain.