Author: Steve

  I was a hero.  Today, I realize I got hit by a truck!  I thought I was over it, but that was just the narcotics talking.  I’m moving a little slower today and I’m noticeably less smug.  It’ll take a couple days to get back to where I was a couple days before the kidney stone hit!   We never left the building today.  Bo and Colleen came for a visit.  They brought a couple of their kids with them, so we got to chat with everybody.  I got in an afternoon rest before Becky and Brian showed up with dinner.  We continue to live the life.   Last week the doctor said it was time for the bandaging to come off.  As soon as anything starts to come loose in the shower, go ahead and peel it off.  For all the stuff they did to me for the heart surgery, there aren’t any stitches anywhere.  They wired my sternum shut so the bone would heal back together.  I guess they put in some internal stitches, but for the major chest wound, and every other entry wound they made for various purposes, they just slapped a piece of tape on it, then put a layer of glue over it.  Everything is sealed up watertight to minimize any chance of infection in the healing process.   What I found out right away is that it’s really weird to have this long tacky bandage running vertically down your entire chest.  You lie down on your back at night and find the most comfortable position for your arms.  It’s not with your arms at your side; no matter where you start them out, they end up on your chest.  So you fall asleep with your hands crossed across your chest and everything is fine, until you wake up a few hours later, in the same position.  It’s time to move.  Your right hand moves away just fine.  Your left hand however, is immovable.  A couple hours of a nice warm hand, under the covers, lying across a sticky bandage, and you find your left hand now glued to your chest.  It’s a challenge to slowly peel your hand off your chest without disturbing the bandaging below it.  When you finally achieve separation, you fall back to sleep determined not to repeat that experience and place your hands and arms carefully at your side.  Guess where your hands are next time you wake up….   I’m happy to report that I am now bandage-free and that challenge in my life has been eliminated.    

  Wow.  That was some weird day.  And long too.   Judy and I were bumping along normally, enjoying the victory tour where we have morning coffee, take our time waking up, go visit someone, get tired, and go home and take a nap.  Thursday was like that.  We visited cousin Janet and her husband Tom at their house out in the country way north of Denver.  What a delightful spot full of patios, flowers, ponds and birds.  We don’t see them very often so there was a lot of catching up to do.  They fed us well, and I actually felt like eating.  It was the most normal day we’ve had in weeks.   It stayed normal until we were sitting in our room at 6pm after my nap.  That’s when the kidney stone hit.  Oh darn.  Not now!  No problem; we know how to deal with this.  We hit back with drugs.  Tramadol.  Hot sit-bath.  No help.  More tramadol.  Still nothing.  This is not some normal kidney stone.  We were at the E.R. by midnight.  Morphine.  CT scan.  Judy warning everyone I was 18 days post-op heart surgery.  The CT results?  I have issues.  Three stones poised at the lower end of the ureter causing all my pain.  One giant stone shaped like a kidney bean still up in the kidney, yet to bring its wrath.  We’ll have to deal with these two problems with two separate procedures.  A night and morning of dozing through morphine, an afternoon procedure to eliminate the three most troublesome stones, a brief recovery, and we were home again by 8 o’clock Friday night.  It’s all kind of a blur.   This morning, Saturday, we’re all rested and relaxed, pain-free from the kidney stone, and back on track with the heart surgery recovery.  Know the old saying “If you want your toe to quit hurting, hit yourself in the finger with a hammer”?  I think Dad used to say that.  Well, it’s true.  During this whole kidney stone thing.  My chest didn’t hurt at all!  There are still a couple kidney stone procedures to go through.  We’re going to blast the kidney bean next week with a non-invasive shock wave lithotripsy (they’re going to blow it up with sound waves).  And now that I’ve got a real urologist, we’ll do follow-up studies to see if we can isolate the cause of my recurring kidney stones and try to short-circuit the process.  With any luck, this will all happen during our remaining convalescence for the heart thing.   I tell the story of life from my perspective.  Some of it is a blur or a blank.  Not so for Judy.  She has to be awake, alert, and responsible the whole time; a much tougher assignment.  This is not an easy assignment, and she has her moments, but she does what she needs to do, and what needs to be done gets done.  She is my rock.   Overall, the kidney stone thing is a minor diversion on our long-term recovery.  I feel better today than I’ve felt in weeks.  We both got a lot of rest last night.  Today we walked at a nice pond.   Took in some World Cup with Brian and Tony.     And got in some deck time.   It’s all good.  

  Hey look.  A squirrel!    

  He says keep doing what we’re doing.  We’ve been careful with altitude since the surgery.  No restrictions there; just be careful with exercise at altitude.  It’s okay to go see the dermatologist, but stay away from the dentist for at least 3 months.  He’s going to get us started on some Cardiac Rehab.  I asked what the estimated useful life of bypass arteries was.  He responded “Guaranteed for the life of the patient!”   A walk in the Loveland Sculpture Garden.     Half a burger and a small chocolate malt for lunch.  OMG, that stayed with me the rest of the day.  Hard to get my appetite back for real.  Food starts to sound good again.  I eat.  Then it doesn’t sound good anymore.   Overall, today was just what the doctor ordered.  More of the same.  

  We got to visit with John B, friend since elementary school, and Kip. We’ve logged a lot of years together.   On the way back home, we made a surprise detour into winter.       There was a black cloud hanging down next to us, then suddenly we were getting pounded by hail.  We pulled over.  It was deafening!  That black cloud spawned a few tornadoes to the east after it passed us.     Tomorrow is a big day for us.  Our first follow-up with the surgeon.  He’ll tell us how we’re doing.