This, I hope, is the last time I will write about my experience with VT: Ventricular Tachycardia. Links to the others:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Some of what's written in the body of this diary is a rewrite of what I've written before but I've extended it through my do-over surgery. Also, at the end of the diary I have made a few observations- one in particular about something that's better than flowers- that I think kossacks should file away for appropriate moments.
I am doing well today, a switch of beta-blocker medication has given me more energy and the ability to read (Vicodin still messes me up a little; it seems to trigger the visualization response in my brain such that words make more images than I can control, which makes extended reading difficult) and my wife says she feels like I'm back in a way I never was after my first surgery.
I was quietly reading on Tuesday morning. As I've cut back on taking Vicodin for pain, I've been able to read more and more. Fascinating side effect, for me at least, of Vicodin is how I can barely read a paragraph before my mind wanders off God knows where. Anyway, my defibrillator went off in my chest like a cell phone that's been set to "vibrate." I am intellectually ready for the day that this thing goes off to kick start my heart and keep me alive but I wasn't ready for it to hummmmmm at me.
I called my doctor to ask, "Is this normal?" (Gee, what question was I not asking?) Actually, it took a while for me to talk to either of my doctors or even their assistants. I kept getting put into voice mail. Finally I called their office and said something to the operator like, "My defibrillator is humming at me. I want you to find the next doctor you see and ask if this is normal or if I should call nine-one-one. I want an answer in less than three damn minutes."
Amazingly, my doctor's assistant suddenly became available to talk to me. She told me to come in so that they could run diagnostics on this machine in my chest. So I went in and a technician, who dresses better than I ever will- which tells me something about my career choice- ran some tests on me that required little more than me pressing my hands together. He printed out the results and said he was going to pass them along to my doctor. He added that I had done exactly the right thing; that little hum in my chest is a built-in warning signal that something is wrong with the defibrillator. They don't know what it is except the problem is located in the lead that pokes down into my heart. Once again I am a rarity; these things shouldn't happen but "like anything else man-made," sometimes it comes up. It could be as little as torn insulation due to a slightly too tight suture when they closed me up from my first surgery.
They scheduled me for surgery on Thursday (yesterday) to either replace the lead or the entire unit. After near forty-five minutes of four different people trying to get an I.V. started in my arm (another side effect: if you don't drink water since midnight because they tell you not to, you get dehydrated and your veins become very uncooperative; normally I'm a good "bleeder" when I give blood but this time it felt like they were twisting an ice pick around inside the crook of my elbow and then the top of my hand), they took me off to surgery. Since I was so obviously agitated by the whole stick-sharp-needles-into-my-arm-repeatedly, they gave me a couple of Valium.
Later my doctor told me that they play music in the operating room because all the studies show that it relaxes the patient. He said, in retrospect, that it might be good to review just exactly what music plays but since I was having such a good time, nobody was too worried before they sent me off to semi-dreamland.
They were putting all these cold patches on me and freshly shaving off half my chest hair when I noticed the music...
"Please allow me to introduce myself,
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith..."
I began to giggle. This froze a couple of the nurses. I had to tell them, "Guys, you're about to perform heart surgery on somebody and you're playing 'Sympathy for the Devil.'" One of the techs covered his eyes and chortled, "Oh my God...wait, that's not right..." I can say there is something surreal about singing along "Who, whooooo" while getting your chest shaved.
Then came the next song:
"We come from the land of ice and snow
from the midnight sun where the hotsprings blow
The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
to fight the horde, singing and crying
Valhalla, I'm coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore..."
(Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin)
My Viking ancestors were sending me a message of welcome! I think, though I'm not sure, that I said something like, "Well, I don't know about you folks but this is putting me right in the mood."
The third and last one I remember, though, was the one that made the vitals-monitoring tech laugh out loud (I can't say for sure if he was or was not the anesthesiologist):
"Hey little sister what have you done?
Hey little sister who's the only one?
Hey little sister who's your superman?
Hey little sister who's the one you want?
Hey little sister shotgun!"
(White Wedding by Billy Idol)
I turned to him and said, "This is great. Heart surgery and aerobics at the same time!"
I left the hospital with a small measure of fame.
Observations:
- Check into your family history. Did anybody just die unexpectedly, particularly at a younger age? It might have been due to a cardiac "electrical" problem. There's no way to test for it after death. Make sure you and your family get an EKG and don't let anything "abnormal" go without further checking.
- Do you give blood? Actually, do you avoid giving blood because getting the line going is torture because your veins won't cooperate? Or do you avoid getting blood drawn to get checked because the process is difficult or painful? Make sure you are thoroughly hydrated.
- Going to have surgery? Choose your music. Work it out with your doctor.
- Have a supply of small change in the hospital. There was something life-affirming about buying a cup of hot chocolate out of the visitors' waiting room vending machine late at night.
- Better than flowers: Bring a box of colored pencils and a book of coloring mandalas to the next person you visit who is "laid up" for a while. This is a link to a couple of free pages:
http://www.coloringcastle.com/...
http://www.edupics.com/...
Coloring is wonderfully therapeutic.