HEALTH UPDATE: Hooray!
Jan. 18th, 2008 07:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaI want to thank everyone for their prayers and good thoughts! They were very effective and even efficacious (there's your vocabulary word for today.)
Yesterday morning they did that left cardiac catheterization on Hubby. My sister-in-law and her husband came to sit with me in the waiting room, as Mama couldn't even walk (the stress fired up her arthritis, and she made her stomach all messed up to boot). We were pretty nervous, but things turned out well. He had an 85% block (!) in the front artery in his left ventricle, but the other two were okay. They put in a stent to correct the block and told us that from now on he has to live the good lifestyle with diet and exercise. They think there's a strong genetic component, as my in-laws both had bypass surgery in their early sixties. And of course hubby has only just turned 48! So he's too young for this. Fortunately, I think he got the message in God's "wake-up call." He has been talking the talk and has asked them to send him to cardiac rehab exercise so he can figure out what's safe for him to do and ease into it. Also has had me loaded down with South Beach Diet info (that's what the doctor puts his patients on) and with all the lists of vitamins/supplements that the doctor gives to all his heart patients. They kept him overnight because there are things to watch for, but he stood up without having any bleeding from the incision and has been feeling okay (except that the entire hospital was freezing cold yesterday and today is ultra-hot . . . I knew they'd overcorrect when everyone complained--it's 21 outside!)
He got a private room because they didn't have any other rooms (we sat in recovery from 9 AM to 12:45 noonish waiting!), and that room had a small sofa and was a "suite." Really nice. But it was on a ward where everyone else was fairly seriously ill (bummer). I landed on the couch and propped my knee up while he was poked, prodded, and tested and then left to lie flat for 4 to 6 hours (it used to be 12 hours!) We watched the various cable TV offerings, all the way through to "R U Smarter than a 5th Grader" and Wayne Brady's "Don't Forget the Lyrics," and then I came home to try to rest, recover, and clean up a little.
I just called up there and he said they took blood at 3AM and 5AM and he's ready to come home NOW, but the discharge paperwork probably won't come until noon or thereabouts. I'm fixin' to head out there and bring him home. Our dog sulked and pined and whined all day and his grandma says she is not keeping him any more, as he wouldn't eat, stared at her accusingly as if it were her fault that his people were gone all day and Daddy didn't come back with me last night, and just fussed like a jackass. This is normal for a pampered Pom, of course. He's still fussing, but I told him Daddy was "at work" and that I was going off to get him soon.
If he thinks I'm going to cook stuff as elaborate as those hospital meals . . . well, we'll see. Their Monterey Chicken on Mexican Rice looked pretty good. (grin) I know my iced tea beats theirs in a bucket, though.
I almost posted this update last night from one of their public computers in the Surgery Waiting room, but I realized I'd have to log in to LJ, and didn't want my password vulnerable. I'd never be able to remember a new one. (grin) It's a rockin' hospital that has two public Web-connected computers in the waiting room AND has wi-fi throughout the public waiting areas. . . .
Yesterday morning they did that left cardiac catheterization on Hubby. My sister-in-law and her husband came to sit with me in the waiting room, as Mama couldn't even walk (the stress fired up her arthritis, and she made her stomach all messed up to boot). We were pretty nervous, but things turned out well. He had an 85% block (!) in the front artery in his left ventricle, but the other two were okay. They put in a stent to correct the block and told us that from now on he has to live the good lifestyle with diet and exercise. They think there's a strong genetic component, as my in-laws both had bypass surgery in their early sixties. And of course hubby has only just turned 48! So he's too young for this. Fortunately, I think he got the message in God's "wake-up call." He has been talking the talk and has asked them to send him to cardiac rehab exercise so he can figure out what's safe for him to do and ease into it. Also has had me loaded down with South Beach Diet info (that's what the doctor puts his patients on) and with all the lists of vitamins/supplements that the doctor gives to all his heart patients. They kept him overnight because there are things to watch for, but he stood up without having any bleeding from the incision and has been feeling okay (except that the entire hospital was freezing cold yesterday and today is ultra-hot . . . I knew they'd overcorrect when everyone complained--it's 21 outside!)
He got a private room because they didn't have any other rooms (we sat in recovery from 9 AM to 12:45 noonish waiting!), and that room had a small sofa and was a "suite." Really nice. But it was on a ward where everyone else was fairly seriously ill (bummer). I landed on the couch and propped my knee up while he was poked, prodded, and tested and then left to lie flat for 4 to 6 hours (it used to be 12 hours!) We watched the various cable TV offerings, all the way through to "R U Smarter than a 5th Grader" and Wayne Brady's "Don't Forget the Lyrics," and then I came home to try to rest, recover, and clean up a little.
I just called up there and he said they took blood at 3AM and 5AM and he's ready to come home NOW, but the discharge paperwork probably won't come until noon or thereabouts. I'm fixin' to head out there and bring him home. Our dog sulked and pined and whined all day and his grandma says she is not keeping him any more, as he wouldn't eat, stared at her accusingly as if it were her fault that his people were gone all day and Daddy didn't come back with me last night, and just fussed like a jackass. This is normal for a pampered Pom, of course. He's still fussing, but I told him Daddy was "at work" and that I was going off to get him soon.
If he thinks I'm going to cook stuff as elaborate as those hospital meals . . . well, we'll see. Their Monterey Chicken on Mexican Rice looked pretty good. (grin) I know my iced tea beats theirs in a bucket, though.
I almost posted this update last night from one of their public computers in the Surgery Waiting room, but I realized I'd have to log in to LJ, and didn't want my password vulnerable. I'd never be able to remember a new one. (grin) It's a rockin' hospital that has two public Web-connected computers in the waiting room AND has wi-fi throughout the public waiting areas. . . .
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 04:15 pm (UTC)Cathy
no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 07:22 pm (UTC)I hope the diet stuff isn't too onerous, and that it will mesh all right with what you're doing yourself.
P.