Pictures & Progress

The picture above was taken on Feb.5th, one day after surgery. Dad hadn't been awake for too long so he was having a hard time focusing on what I was doing, plus he was on morphine. He looks a lot better now, his bandages on his chest have been removed and the yellow wire that is coming out of his neck in the picture has been removed.

This picture was taken on Saturday, Feb. 6th and you can tell that he looks a lot better than the picture from the 5th. Dad has to build up his lung capacity again and this little gadget measures how well he is doing. He is supposed to take 10 deep breaths on this thing every hour and more if you feel up to it. Dad has been doing this like he is supposed to and doing more sometimes when he isn't so tired.

Yesterday about 2:30pm he was transferred out of ICU into a regular patient room. I suspect he will probably be there until Thursday or so. He has been in good spirits throughout this whole process, I am so proud of him. His nurses have all been so very nice and taken such good care of him. Dad did say he didn't wish this on anyone. It will be a long road to a full recovery, but he is ready to take that journey.

Ambition

Dad is doing great! Each time we see him he has accomplished another milestone. Yesterday he got out of bed and sat in the chair, which the nurses said was not something that happened until later and they called him ambitious. We really liked to hear that! This morning he was feeding himself, but he definitely looked wore out. They came and removed the chest drain tubes (he didn't even know he had this sticking in his chest). He was hoping to get into a regular room this evening, but the doc said the 3rd floor rooms were all full and that he may have to stay another night in ICU. He has also been running a temperature that the nurses and doctors are monitoring closely. Yesterday they took some blood samples and cultures to run some tests just to be safe, they also said that a temp is somewhat normal after a major surgery.

Will give another update at the end of the day!

Recovery in ICU

Good Evening everyone!

Dads surgery started early today and finished early thank goodness. The doctor said they had expected that surgery would end between 4-6pm. Well, when the doctor came walking into the room it totally scared me, but we could tell by the look on his face that everything had gone good. The doctor said he did a valve replacement, removed the aneurysm, and also complete a single bypass. They told me we could go back and visit shortly once they had him out of recovery and stable.

This is actually when I got nervous, the thought of seeing my dad and not knowing how he would look is quite scary to me. We were able to go back during the 5 pm visitation for about 5 minutes to see dad. The anesthesia had not worn off and he was on a ventilator. Just the thought of that thing breathing for my dad is crazy. He definitely had so many things hooked up to him, but the doctors had it pretty well concealed. Everything was under the blankets and his hands were in restraints in case he woke up startled and tried to pull the tube out of his mouth.

The nurse that was in charge explained everything to us very well and thorough and I really was glad she was taking care of my dad. Tomorrow morning they should be able to take him off the ventilator and hopefully he will be able to communicate with us a little. I CANT WAIT!

I am so relieved everything went well today! Thank you to all of the visitors that came today to help us pass the time, it really helped!

Anticipation is the key word right now

Well, we are sitting here...I was trying to think of a title for the blog this morning & dad suggested "Anticipation". I thought it fit perfectly. Dad is just laying here in a waiting room, he hates the hospital gowns. He made my mom put 2 on him one facing the correct way and one facing the other so there were no openings left. He is terrified of being the old man walking through the hospital with his booty hanging out :)
Some funnier moments this morning:
1. Dad said he and the nurses won't be getting along very well if they keeping poking him and lifting his gown.
2. The nurse said that we can cut the tv on while we were waiting and dad said he didn't want to watch tv unless tom and jerry was on.
3. Dad has not been able to eat or drink anything since midnight so he woke up this morning & said "I wake up every morning and I am never hungry. Today I wake up and I am so hungry and can't eat."

So far everything is good. I am so proud of my dad for keeping his spirits up. He has already had an EKG this morning and right now he is being shaved.

Just in case you are wondering, the attached picture is completely a joke! We are just trying to keep the feeling calm in the hospital :)
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Gonna give this a shot...

Hello All!

I thought that since my dad is going into the hospital tomorrow for surgery, that this would be the perfect opportunity to begin blogging so everyone that is not close could follow and keep up with his progress.

For those of you who dont know, he will be going to the hospital at 7:30am to prepare for his 12:30pm open heart surgery. Anyone who knows my dad knows that he has always had heart troubles, it runs in his family. He was honerably discharged from the Army when he was in his twenties for his heart. He has blockage in his arteries that the cardiologists have been monitoring for a while. However, last week they found something new...an aneurysm that is 5.8 centimeters and 6 centimeters is considered critical, so the team of doctors decided that they would go ahead and perform open heart surgery and repair anything and everything they saw. At this point, we know he will be having bypass surgery, we just dont know if it will be a binary bypass, triple, or quadruple bypass.

We have been told that the surgery will last about 6 hours, he will then go to ICU for approximately 2 days, then a regular room for 5-7 more days depending on his progress.

I will use this blog to keep everyone posted on his progress and please keep him in your prayers.