Came home Monday night
Came home Monday night
Thanks for all your consoling responses.
We got to the hospital around 3 pm. I think I was in surgery by 5. The plan was to access the pericardium going in by way of the bottom of the current sternum incision. However an echo (TEE?) in the OR showed that I also had fluid in my lungs, so I got a left anterior thoracotomy--an incision beneath my breast, and a chest tube. The tube was in until Monday afternoon. I think they drained a little over 2 liters. It was very uncomfortable, but not excruciating.
The tube drained into a box for measurement, and could be unhooked from its pump for exercise. I got sort of self-conscious speeding around the corridor 3 times an hour in the fast lane, with my pericardial fluid container flapping in the breeze. One woman asked her nurse to trip me.
JKM7--I have some of the same questions and hope to get some answers at a followup appt on Monday. I didn't have typical symptoms, except for a feeling of fullness. Over several weeks, I felt like a big hard ball was filling just south of my sternum when I got my heart rate up. It wasn't painful, but unpleasant, and I slowed down more and more to prevent it. I never would have characterized as shortness of breath. I described it to the cardiologist at 3-month checkup, and still didn't manage to use the words to trigger any followup but to call back if it was still there next week. In the same appt I did just fine on a pre-rehab stress echo. When I did call back, the nurse advised me to take ibuprofen, stating it was not likely a heart problem. I told her I felt like I was losing ground and couldn't move around as well as several weeks earlier. She talked to the doctor, I had a chest xray, then another echo, and 2 days later, drainage...sorry, didn't mean to be so lengthy.
The good news: it doesn't come back! So the surgeon doing rounds said.
