Recovery

Thank you everyone for all of your many thoughts and prayers! I am now home recovering so I figured I could update everyone about my surgery!

Friday 3:45am our alarm goes off and its time to shower and head to The Heart Hospital. I made sure to wear my lucky four leaf clover socks that the Mays family gave me for my last surgery!

About 5:30am The pre-op stuff began. This included paperwork, drawing blood, a chest xray, and starting my iv. Did I mention I hate needles? Well the nurse was so nice to say they would numb my hand for my iv... yeah well no one mentioned that it was a numbing shot... I didn't sign up for an extra needle to be stabbed into my hand.. After the numbing shot she started the iv but was unable to thread it therefore she sat there digging around in my hand for a while until she decided to give up and the anesthesiologist stepped in and put the iv in my other hand... Lets just say I was NOT happy and if this was any indication on how my surgery was going to go I was a little worried.

Around 7:15am it was time to head back to surgery. Night night for me!

Around 9:00am I woke up with a scratchy throat and busted lip from being intubated.(sp?) Once I was brought back to the room it was time for a popsicle! The nurse offered me a menu to order breakfast from and then realized Dr. Ryan ordered me to be on a liquid diet so all I had was beef broth! yummy... Then I was given pain meds!

A big thank you to the staff at The Heart Hospital Baylor Plano because they are absolutely the sweetest most caring bunch around! Regardless of my silly questions and comments they always smile and make you feel at home!

Around 11 I was released from the hospital. We spent the remainder of the day watching movies on the couch and sleeping. The pain from the incision was not enjoyable.

Today Win and Mom went with me to school to help finish setting up my classroom for my transition to our new curriculum. A big thank you to them both because I was very stressed out about how I was going to get it all done!

I don't have much of an appetite today, I have felt nauseous on and off, and I have a fear that I have urinary retention... Sorry if that is too much information but its true! The pain from the incision is less today but still hurts. Hopefully tomorrow I will be back to normal!

On a positive note I am now OBSESSED with Pinterest and can't wait to show off my new craft projects! Fun blogs to come!

Wireless!

Katy did great! Doc said he could see inflammation around the wires when he got in there and took them out. Hopefully now Katy can get past all the pain and discomfort and move on to the next stage of her rehab from her heart surgery. You can see from the photo she's awake and resting and we got a souvenir too :)

EARLY MORNIN

We just checked in at the hospital and are awaiting to finish up registration and pre-op stuff. We're hoping todays' procedure is just a day surgery and she can come home this afternoon. Either Jan (Katy's mom) or I will post an update when we hear from the surgeon. Mazy and Ninja had to fight over who got to give mommy a kiss goodbye first ^_^

Surgery

Tomorrow morning I will be going in to have my wires around my sternum taken out. We have to be at The Heart Hospital Baylor Plano at 5am and then surgery is scheduled for 7:30am! Win and my mom will be with me and hopefully Win will be able to update the blog so everyone knows my progress. My cardiac surgeon said if I am tolerating the pain meds well should be able to go home tomorrow afternoon, if not they will keep me over night! Thank you very much for all of your thoughts and prayers!

Update on my murmur: My cardiologist's nurse called yesterday to let me know that the stress echo with doppler confirmed that I have pulmonary stenosis. After I speak with my cardiac surgeon tomorrow I will hopefully know more abuot what that means for me!

WISH ME LUCK!

Frustrated

What is wrong with me? Why is something always wrong with me? Will my heart ever be healthy? These are the questions that go through my head all the time.
Last week I spend every afternoon at some sort of doctors appointment. My cardiologist and I are both concerned about why I still have a very loud murmur and shortness of breath. I cant climb a few stairs, or get in and out of bed in the middle of the night, let alone exercise without having shortness of breath. I'm not in the best shape but come on at the age of 28 I shouldn't have these constant problems. Keep in mind 7 months ago I had open heart surgery to close my VSD and they stitched a PFO... You would think my problems would be solved... but nope. So then I went to see my cardiac surgeon... after a 2 hour anxious wait in his office and a very unprofessional meeting here is what I know: I have surgery scheduled for next Friday to have the wires wrapped about my sternum removed which should solve my chest pain and constant inflammation, he thinks the murmur we are hearing is a flow murmur, I have to have a stress echo with doppler to determine my pulmonary artery pressures and then we can figure out what to do next.
So today I had my stress echo with doppler.... I hit my target heart rate at 160 in 4.5 minutes, and then my max heart rate of 190 at 8 minutes. PITIFUL! Its so frustrating! Anyways, the cardiologist reading the test today does not know my case so he wasn't very helpful... I will hopefully hear from my cardiologist and my cardiac surgeon in the next day or two before surgery.

I'm ready to be fixed! For real this time! Goodbye wires!