Post- Surgery

I'm through the surgery, waiting for them to process my rather complicated discharge. I'm going to the retirement home today, perhaps by way of my apartment to pick up some clothes.

I was in surgery for 7 hours yesterday. They started out dealing with the atrial flutter. Of the two kinds of arrhythmia I had, this was the toughest kind to ablate. They couldn't quite get it to go away, so they switched to dealing with the fibrillation. They were more successful at this than with the flutter. At the end of the procedure, I was still in flutter, and they had to "cardiovert" me. That's where they zap your heart to shock it back into normal rhythm. It worked, and as I sit here, I'm in sinus (normal) rhythm with a reasonable heart rate of around 80 bpm. So things have improved for me, but I may not be 100% rid of the arrhythmia. They have me back on amiodarone, the rate and rhythm control drug with nasty long term side effects on the liver and lungs. We'll see in three months if I need to stay on it.

Since they worked in the left atrium, I'm at heightened stroke risk. They have me back on coumedin, but until my INR gets into therapeutic range, I'll have to inject myself with Lovanox twice a day. The retirement home charges for medication management according to the number of prescriptions. The lowest tier is 1-4 scripts. After that it jumps up $250.00/month. I've gotten the OK from my doctors to have the home manage only four of my meds, provided the coumedin is one of them.

So here I sit, bored, in my hospital bed, ready to start a new phase in my life. I'm nervous about it, but the only way out is through, as they say.