A Quick Update on My Husband's Surgery

I kept hoping to be able to post a nice up-beat update with pictures of him looking good, and all that . . . but I think I'll go ahead and post a quick update of where things are now.

We got to the hospital Monday, and he went into surgery pretty much on schedule. The surgery was LONG, but I was really impressed with the system at this hospital, they have a specific surgery waiting area (not surprising) and when you get there, while the patient checks in, the "family member" does her own check in where she's given a patient number to be able to check his progress on a monitor in the waiting room (in surgery, out of surgery, in recovery, in ICU, family can go back . . . ) and they asked for my cell phone number, and asked that, if I left to get lunch or anything more than going to the restroom, that I just let them know.  I also was asked at least 2 other times by other employees for my cell phone number in case they needed to get in touch with me.

During surgery, a nurse called from the OR, every hour and a half (roughly) or at major points (he's ready to start, he's off the bi-pass machine, etc) to update me as to how things were going (they used a phone in the waiting area for that). After surgery, the surgeon came and met with me and told me how things had gone.

Long story short, as a precaution, he wanted to do another heart cath to double check that there weren't any blockages or kinks, before closing the chest cavity, so for Monday night they had closed over the top layer (or done dressings, or something, I never saw his chest during that phase) but hadn't closed the chest cavity.

Tuesday morning they did the heart cath, as planned, and everything looked fine, but then, due to scheduling issues, they weren't able to close his chest cavity until Wednesday afternoon. Because of it being open, they kept him sedated that entire time as well. So Tuesday was a very long day of just sitting and watching him sleep . . .

Last night, they woke him enough to make sure he could follow instructions and move his extremities but he was very disoriented, and REALLY didn't like the breathing tube that was in, so they kept him lightly sedated overnight, with plans to remove the breathing tube today.

This morning, things seemed to be on track. He was awake, but still hated the breathing tube and not being able to talk. He wanted me right with him though, so I spent the morning standing by the bed holding his hand, nice after 2 days of him being kind of "gone". . . Late morning, they made the decision to remove the chest tube, and all seemed to be well, but when i came back from lunch he was complaining that he "couldn't breath" and they found that his blood oxygen levels had dropped.

He had been difficult to intubate in the first place, so they were nervous about waiting and getting to a point where they needed to re-intubate him NOW, and not  being able to get it done quickly enough, so they decided to re-intubate him abit earlier than they might otherwise have, just to be safe.

So now things are back to pretty much how they were last night. He's sedated, and intubated, but resting peacefully. While they were intubating, they checked and confirmed there's no fluids in his lungs, so that's good, and the PA said that he's recovering very well from the surgery itself, so really the only concern right now is the breathing issue.

The current plan is to try again tomorrow, but have him breath with the chest tube, but no extra oxygen, for a little while first, to make sure he can handle it ok.

So, that's where things are at. Our original time line had figured he'd only be in the hospital around a week, and we'd figured that, by this point, he'd be doing well enough that I could spend some time at the hospital with him, but also spend some time with the kids, but so far that hasn't worked out.  Thankfully, the kids, even Little Bit (who was quite apprehensive about being without me) are doing great! I've been e-mailing frequent updates on my husband's condition to the older girls, along with his mother and sister and a few friends, and Ashlyn replies to every e-mail with a long list of questions for more clarification.

Little Bit has lost both front bottom teeth while I've been gone. And apparently can't wait to show her Sabbath School teacher at the church there, hee hee. My dad said he raised the training wheels on her bike and she's having fun practicing riding with it abit more wobbly, and he lowered the seats on his and mom's bikes as low as they'd go and the big girls have been riding those, so sounds like lots of fun going on up there, and thankfully they're doing ok without me. (well, mom might be going crazy, guess I haven't asked her about that LOL).

So that's where things are around here. Not a great, fun, post, but life is, what it is . . . hopefully my next update can include pictures of hubby up and moving around abit, and, no doubt, glaring at me for taking pictures :)