J
John Cochran
Jerry had his surgery today (6/27/03). Jennie and I have been corresponding with his wife Carol, and she asked that we post the following message from her on the post surgery forum. Congratulations to Jerry, and welcome to this side of the mountain!
--John
Thank you both for your email well wishes yesterday. I have the loan of a laptop and access to internet from my motel room in Rochester as of today and I can keep the laptop until Jerry is released from the hospital. It was great to see your messages when I checked email tonight. The surgery is finally over and Jerry is doing great so far post-op! You were both exactly right, Dr. Zehr, his assistants, the nurses, and all the support staff here at St. Mary's and Mayo have been incredible! Although I'm tired right now, I really wanted to let you both know how the last two days have gone before I go to bed tonight. Please post this for me in the Post Surgery area of the forum, if you don't mind, with a big thank you to all who make VR a great place to come for information and support.
Yesterday, we got up at 4 AM and wallked to St. Mary's (8 blocks from the motel) for Jerry's angiogram, blood work, and chest x-ray which we were told was to be scheduled for 6 AM. We sat in a room for 6 hours watching CNN war coverage before Jerry was finally wheeled off for the angiogram. I could tell he was getting pretty impatient and irritable aound 11:30 AM and I thought he might be tempted to bolt. He has a limited amount of patience sometimes! Thankfully, they came for him at Noon. After the angiogram, Dr. Zehr visited with us and pronounced Jerry's coranary arteries to be "perfect". It was a great relief to know he didn't have to worry about bypass surgery too! We took a shuttle bus back to the motel around 6 PM equipped with special soap and some kind of ointment Jerry had to put in his nasal passages so he would not breath staff infection germs onto the incision he would be having the next day. The nurses urged us to go out for a good dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant, but we were both tired and ate a take out dinner in the room with our 2 sons and daughter-in-law who had just arrived. We called St. Mary's, as directed, between 8:00 PM and 9:30 PM and were told Jerry should check in for surgery at 5:45 AM the next morning.
Again, we set the alarm for 4 AM. We arrived by car this time, in pouring rain, around 5:30 AM. Jerry was wheeled off around 7:00 AM for pre-op. Although we are not Catholic, one of the chaplains, a nun with a lovely Irish brogue said a family prayer with us before we each gave Jerry a brief hug and said goodbye.. I think this was the scariest part of the day for all of us! We were communicated with on a regular basis on the progress of the surgery by a staff person assigned to us. She came to tell us when Jerry's surgery begain at 8:45 AM and that he had reached the point of the heart lung bypass by 10 or 10:30 AM. Around 12 or 12:30 PM we were informed that Dr. Zehr had begun to close the incision. About 45 minutes later, we met with Dr. Zehr's assistant and were told Jerry was going to be transferred to ICU and we could come to his room in another hour. He said the surgery had gone extremely well with the Synergraft valve being in excellent condition and the right size match. There were no pressure gradients detected. Dr. Zehr did have to remove a great deal of calcification from the "heart chamber" and "left ventricle". It was only about a half hour later that we received the call to come to Jerry's ICU room. All the tubes and monitors were intimidating at first but the nurse explained them and what the readings meant. Jerry was already coming out of the aneasthetic and fighting the tube in his throat. He was able to communicate that he thought he was choking and wanted it out! All four of us were allowed to be in ICU with him and I was allowed to hold his hand. The nurse said that he could hear us but may not remember much of what was said afterward. Some of our comments were responded to with hand signals that left us with no doubt that his sense of humor was still intact
Within another half hour he was determined to be "breathing over his tube" well enough that it could be removed. We had to leave for a few minutes while they removed it. After the tube was out, he spoke to us somewhat normally and joked with the nurse saying he was still determined to watch the Wisconsin Badger game tonight. She said she preferred to watch Friends and he said she could, just because he really liked her. He also asked why the eight of us (the morphine had doubled our family number) had nothing better to do but to stand there watching him and did we go shopping at the mall today? We left Jerry to get some rest for a couple of hours and made phone calls to family and friends from our motel rooms. When we returned to the hospital, Jerry was fully awake and sounded much more himself. Dr. Zehr stopped by and said he was amazed Jerry was already (I don't know the spelling) extabated. The nurse said that while we were gone, Jerry asked her if he could get out of bed yet. He also told her he was planning on going home by Monday. Yeah, right!
Tomorrow, if all continues well, Jerry will be moved into a regular room in the step-down unit and be allowed more visitors. The nurse suggested we all sleep in a little later tomorrow before coming back to see him. Right now, that sounds great to me.
I'll continue to keep you posted but need to sleep now.
Carol
--John
Thank you both for your email well wishes yesterday. I have the loan of a laptop and access to internet from my motel room in Rochester as of today and I can keep the laptop until Jerry is released from the hospital. It was great to see your messages when I checked email tonight. The surgery is finally over and Jerry is doing great so far post-op! You were both exactly right, Dr. Zehr, his assistants, the nurses, and all the support staff here at St. Mary's and Mayo have been incredible! Although I'm tired right now, I really wanted to let you both know how the last two days have gone before I go to bed tonight. Please post this for me in the Post Surgery area of the forum, if you don't mind, with a big thank you to all who make VR a great place to come for information and support.
Yesterday, we got up at 4 AM and wallked to St. Mary's (8 blocks from the motel) for Jerry's angiogram, blood work, and chest x-ray which we were told was to be scheduled for 6 AM. We sat in a room for 6 hours watching CNN war coverage before Jerry was finally wheeled off for the angiogram. I could tell he was getting pretty impatient and irritable aound 11:30 AM and I thought he might be tempted to bolt. He has a limited amount of patience sometimes! Thankfully, they came for him at Noon. After the angiogram, Dr. Zehr visited with us and pronounced Jerry's coranary arteries to be "perfect". It was a great relief to know he didn't have to worry about bypass surgery too! We took a shuttle bus back to the motel around 6 PM equipped with special soap and some kind of ointment Jerry had to put in his nasal passages so he would not breath staff infection germs onto the incision he would be having the next day. The nurses urged us to go out for a good dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant, but we were both tired and ate a take out dinner in the room with our 2 sons and daughter-in-law who had just arrived. We called St. Mary's, as directed, between 8:00 PM and 9:30 PM and were told Jerry should check in for surgery at 5:45 AM the next morning.
Again, we set the alarm for 4 AM. We arrived by car this time, in pouring rain, around 5:30 AM. Jerry was wheeled off around 7:00 AM for pre-op. Although we are not Catholic, one of the chaplains, a nun with a lovely Irish brogue said a family prayer with us before we each gave Jerry a brief hug and said goodbye.. I think this was the scariest part of the day for all of us! We were communicated with on a regular basis on the progress of the surgery by a staff person assigned to us. She came to tell us when Jerry's surgery begain at 8:45 AM and that he had reached the point of the heart lung bypass by 10 or 10:30 AM. Around 12 or 12:30 PM we were informed that Dr. Zehr had begun to close the incision. About 45 minutes later, we met with Dr. Zehr's assistant and were told Jerry was going to be transferred to ICU and we could come to his room in another hour. He said the surgery had gone extremely well with the Synergraft valve being in excellent condition and the right size match. There were no pressure gradients detected. Dr. Zehr did have to remove a great deal of calcification from the "heart chamber" and "left ventricle". It was only about a half hour later that we received the call to come to Jerry's ICU room. All the tubes and monitors were intimidating at first but the nurse explained them and what the readings meant. Jerry was already coming out of the aneasthetic and fighting the tube in his throat. He was able to communicate that he thought he was choking and wanted it out! All four of us were allowed to be in ICU with him and I was allowed to hold his hand. The nurse said that he could hear us but may not remember much of what was said afterward. Some of our comments were responded to with hand signals that left us with no doubt that his sense of humor was still intact
Within another half hour he was determined to be "breathing over his tube" well enough that it could be removed. We had to leave for a few minutes while they removed it. After the tube was out, he spoke to us somewhat normally and joked with the nurse saying he was still determined to watch the Wisconsin Badger game tonight. She said she preferred to watch Friends and he said she could, just because he really liked her. He also asked why the eight of us (the morphine had doubled our family number) had nothing better to do but to stand there watching him and did we go shopping at the mall today? We left Jerry to get some rest for a couple of hours and made phone calls to family and friends from our motel rooms. When we returned to the hospital, Jerry was fully awake and sounded much more himself. Dr. Zehr stopped by and said he was amazed Jerry was already (I don't know the spelling) extabated. The nurse said that while we were gone, Jerry asked her if he could get out of bed yet. He also told her he was planning on going home by Monday. Yeah, right! Tomorrow, if all continues well, Jerry will be moved into a regular room in the step-down unit and be allowed more visitors. The nurse suggested we all sleep in a little later tomorrow before coming back to see him. Right now, that sounds great to me.
I'll continue to keep you posted but need to sleep now.
Carol
