On heart surgery
Two entries from my time in Boston
Howdy everyone.
Today is my first post since my heart surgery last week. Below are some recent journal entries:
10/27
Today is my first journal entry following heart surgery last Wednesday, the 23rd. I wish I captured more in the previous days, including the night before, because it was quite a unique experience, but for all the drugs I’ve ingested, pain I’ve endured, and seafood I’ve consumed, that has not been possible.
At the moment, I am relatively delirious. Sitting in my hospital room, I see in the corner of my eye, on occasion, what might be Tinker Bell and her friends floating around. And I sometimes hear a faint whistle that I cannot distinguish as background hospital noise or pressure on something in my ear.
I feel much better today than I did four days ago. I can actually sit up and move around on my own. Still, this, my third major surgery, has been by far the most painful.
The scar on my chest is much larger than I thought it’d be. And I’ve had several other far-from-pleasurable experiences which I feel are too crude to articulate publicly. But the good news is that I’m doing better, my heart rate is returning to normal, and most importantly, the surgery was, knock on wood, a success.
Of course, we’re not out of the woods yet, but we’ve mostly made it through the shit storm.
My time here has been, as I said, delirious. I hardly remember any of it. Which I’m glad for, because they’d not be fond memories. But, you know, I do feel blessed because if I were born just a half-century earlier, I’d likely not have had the opportunity for this problem to be taken care of, and who knows how long I would have lasted then.
Interesting thought.
The night before surgery was rather emotional. Because even though, of course, medicine today is so far advanced that I didn’t feel worried at all about whether I’d “make it through” the surgery, it was still a thought in my often dramatic mind.
If you’re ever to have such an invasive surgery—especially as someone who’s not a part of the hospital system, someone who can see how regularly these operations successfully take place—it’s hard not to at least wonder these sorts of things on such an occasion as the night before.
Not to mention, when I was in elementary school, we had a school counselor named Mrs. Brown who had to have a valve repair surgery or something like that . . . Something similar to what I just had. But, unfortunately, she did not “make it through” the surgery.
So I had these thoughts of what would happen, and even though I did not really worry anything bad would happen, I still had to contend with the thoughts in a more real way than just thinking about life on any regular day.
I mean, we all have these sorts of thoughts. But it’s not every day that we go to bed knowing our heart will be exposed to open air when the sun rises.
Surgery is certainly one of those experiences that removes you from your drowsy routine and sits you down before the many windows of what could be.
And it’s a weird feeling, this, as I’m sure you could imagine. Especially in the wake of my father’s passing. What would my brother and mother do? How would they deal with this? Please, Lord, protect me so they don’t have to endure another one.
It seems he did. And I’m glad for it, and I feel a lot better now, and I’m a lot more hopeful about the coming year.
I still miss my father. I’ve thought much about him recently because it would have been nice to have him here for this.
It still doesn’t feel like he’s gone. And he’s not. He’s with me, I know it, because I’m still here . . . As are all the people whose lives he touched. I know, surely, the world would feel a lot more like he weren’t here if I didn’t have all those who loved him so much around because, within themselves, lay a piece of him.
More than anything, really, who we are is what we do to, for, and with other people. We are not just ourselves, you could say, but a central amalgamation of those with whom we share our lives.
10/28
The night before this entry, I took what turned out to be a little bit too much of a drug called furosemide. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I suspect, after losing a significant amount of liquid that night, I became severely dehydrated and deficient in electryolytes which, in turn, led me to perhaps the most excruciating experience of my time in the hospital.
Had a pretty awful night last night. I’m very, very out of it right now. Probably because I went to the bathroom about 8 times from 7 pm to 7 am and sweat through my bed.
Not to mention the dreams. I just had some of the weirdest, most vivid, and longest-lasting dreams I’ve ever experienced.
I am sick of feeling out of it. I don’t like being disconnected from reality. I rejected pain medication this morning, so we’ll see how long I last before needing more.
Being a 25-year-old man in a children’s hospital post-op unit feels, in a funny way, like I’ve relinquished my manhood. I’m sure I’d feel the same at a different hospital, but the environment really adds to the reality of my state.
In addition to my utter immobility, I have to tell the nurses things like how often I pee, how much I pee, if I pooped, if it was solid, and if I want any juice to replenish. And, I think worst of all, the news of a poop arouses the most merry round of applause from my caretaker.
I mean, it is pretty funny in hindsight.
I feel like I’m in a jail cell, honestly. Everyone here is great, but I do not like being stuck in this same room all day, every day. I’m ready to be out and return to normal life.
I want to try and post something on my newsletter, but I don’t trust myself to make sure I’m not posting something ridiculous, since I can hardly spell properly and my sense of reality is very distorted.
Note: I have taken the time to edit this entry so it is coherent.
I see now, more than ever, that nothing is more valuable than health. It’s crazy just how quickly a functional human being can be pummeled into useless goop. That’s how I feel right now. Like useless goop. I don’t like it.
And I’m going to do my best to live as well as I can after this and not waste my life away chasing things that don’t matter.
Man, I had a dream last night that I was sitting in the car with my dad, and we were talking about his problems (which isn’t exactly the best way to describe them, but for the sake of simplicity, it is the word I will use), and instead of trying to solve the problems for him, I just hugged him, and he started crying, and so did I.
It seems this dream has revealed that my judgment stood as a barrier between him and what all humans need most—love.
Or perhaps he did feel loved . . . Perhaps it is I from whom my judgment barricaded that necessary thing.
This was the most painful of all the dreams I had.
If only I hugged him more while he was here.
I suppose we could all use a little less judgment and a few more hugs.
It’s been a tough year for my family.
I guess I could choose to see the bright side, but as a human being—rather than some supernatural entity—I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to have trouble divorcing myself from the emotions that tend to come with pain and suffering. It’s natural, in other words, to feel down in the dumps and sorry for yourself. Shit happens.
What you can’t do is linger. You can’t just sit there. You gotta acknowledge that shit went south, pick yourself up, and keep moving . . . Give yourself time to let pain do its thing, and then, when time beckons, take a step forward.
A few extra pictures from the trip
Ryan! I was shocked to see this title and excited to read… I had open heart surgery when I was six! Somehow my memories from those 5 days in the hospital are so clear in my brain (except, of course, when I was actually in surgery😂) despite my young age. Heart surgery isn’t something you forget. Do you mind me asking what your heart issue was?