vifferman

... is going to take quite some time.

I've lost a lot of condition, and about 6kg of weight, much of which is muscle I put on in the weeks leading up to the operation. Perversely, I was told that fit people often fare worse during major surgery, as they require more anaesthetic and sedatives. That was certainly my experience. My recovery should have been better, but all my 'conditioning' seems to have been gobbled up by a couple of weeks of semi-inactivity and reduced diet. Diuretics and other droogz (and frequent blood sampling) probably haven't helped.

The worst thing (next to my food tasting like crap, making me reluctant to eat), is my left shoulder. I now have great sympathy for people who've busted their collarbone(s), as that's how my shoulder feels. My right arm is pretty much as mobile as before the op, but I can't lift my left arm as high as my shoulder. I guess this is an artefact from having my the left side of my ribcage levered open. I need to apply a heatpack to it about 5 or 6 times a day to help get it mobile and the maximum doses of paracetamol are largely just to deal with the pain from that and my sternum.

Last night I had a new and unexpected pain; dunno what it was, but I'm hoping it wasn't anything to do with my kidneys, as it was a sharp stabbing pain in the right lower part of my back. It came on very quickly, was about a '9' on the pain scale, and nothing I could do would make it go away. Eventually I drifted off into a pain-fogged sleep, and when I woke up at 12:46am, it had lessened and I was able to take some more panadol.

My new bed seems to be working (which is a relief, given the price!) We bought a special mattress with 'memory foam' over latex. Feels really weird, like sleeping on plasticene, but has resulted in no pressure points when I'm lying immobile in one position, so I can sleep for as long as five and half hours at a time, without sleeping tablets (which is convenient as I forgot to get a script for some).

On the weekend we received the last of some scary bills for the operation. Some of the items were scarily weird, like $115 "for the use of power tools". I'm now worth more too, as I have $71 worth of stainless-steel wire in my chest, about $1345 in silk sutures, and $1800 for a ring sewn into my heart ("one ring to fix it all"?)

I have to have daily blood tests for the next few weeks, which is problematic as my arms have track marks a junkie would be ashamed of, and the veins have lots of scar tissue and bruising. My stomach looks like someone has been stabbing me with a syringe loaded with ink, as it has some 'interesting' black dots, courtesy of subcutaneous clixane injections, my least favourite indignity, due to the pain of administration. I have somewhere north of 1000 pills still to take; these include aspirin, warfarin, ferusemide, panadol, mirtazapine, amiodarone, metaprolol, and some others I can't recall. Happily, some have now been discontinued, which is good, as they tasted bad or added to the side-effects. I can't keep track of them all, so the vifferbabe has kindly made a schedule for me on the fridge - I just have to gather up a handful of pills and tick them off on the chart.

So.
I'm alive, and while I can't say I'm particularly enjoying being alive (mainly because of the pain, weakness, and not looking forward to eating), I'm making progress each day, albeit very slowly. I've almost used up all my leave, and I'm not looking forward to going back to work, partly because my job is very boring, and partly because of the complete lack of contact from anyone in the last three weeks. You'd think given they have my contact details they might have phoned my wife to see if I was still alive, but apparently they don't give a crap. Time to start looking for a new job somewhere, me thinks.