Q
qball
Hi All,
First I would just like to thank everyone for sharing their experiences as it has been very helpful these past few weeks.
I just wanted to share my dad's story (he's 73 years old) which began about two weeks ago on 8/17/09. He woke up around 2 am with chest pains and in a cold sweat. He woke up my mom who then woke me up and I took him to the hospital since he refused that I call an ambulance. He gets stabilized and then 2 days later is transferred to the hospital in which his regular heart doctor worked. This doc had told my dad he would need a valve replacement over a year ago but my dad had held off for fear of the surgery I'm guessing. But after this mild heart attack my dad agrees to do it and it's scheduled for 8/24/09.
On the Thursday before the surgery the oral doctors come to look at my dad's teeth and said that due to poor hygiene he would need some of his teeth pulled out before the heart surgery. They didn't want any bacteria or infection to travel from his teeth/gums directly to his heart. So he gets 4 teeth pulled out on that Friday. The day after I go to visit him and he tells me that getting them pulled out was the most painful experience of his life and that he doesn't think the oral surgeons gave him any local anesthesia. I asked the oral dr. that came to check on him but he denied anyone would do that but he didn't do the actual pulling (this is bad omen #1).
I go home on that Saturday night and decide to come back Sunday to visit again. Sunday morning I get a call from my dad saying that he is bleeding out his mouth and no one can stop it. So I rush to the hospital to find that his mouth is bleeding from the extraction points. I ask the nurses what is going on and they think it might have been a blood thinner he was given. The worst part is that the oral surgeons see him 3 times over 12 hours or so and the best treatment they can give him is to have him pack gauge in his mouth to stop the bleeding. But every time he puts 2 new ones in they become soaked in blood after about 10 minutes and he needs to replace them. This happens for probably 12-16 hours until the nurses finally call the heart doctor cause he is losing so much blood that he fainted while being helped to use the restroom, and then needed a blood transfusion. The heart dr. gets the oral surgeon to come up and he finally decides to give him stitches and to "burn" the wound so that it seals. This works and it's like someone shut off a leaky faucet. Why didn't they do this in the very beginning...I have no idea (this is bad omen #2).
I stayed with him Sunday night and he finally gets some rest although I couldn't sleep all night. The next morning, Monday, he goes in for prep at 6:30am and surgery at 8:30am. My mom, sister and brother wait with me in the waiting room and the surgery is finally done at around 4:00pm. I talked to the surgeon and he said he had a Bicuspid Aortic Valve ever since he was born and it was replaced with a bovine tissue valve. He also had to get a Coronary Bypass Surgery Graft done. The surgeries took about 5 hours but he had some excessive bleeding that they had to clean up but that he was looking good as far as how the surgery went. We all see him for about 15 minutes before leaving since he is not expected to wake up til the next day.
The next day (Tuesday) we go see him and he still has the breathing tube in. He is barely awake but can wiggle his toes or grasp your hand if you tell him to. Since he is older and smaller than a normal person (5'1" about 100 lbs) we figure that all the drugs still haven't flushed from his body. The next night (Wednesday) I see him and he has a feeding tube inserted and he has restraints on. During the day when my sister visited him and they removed his breathing tube he started howling in pain for hours. When I see him he keeps asking me to remove his feeding tube and that his legs were being crushed by something although nothing were on them. I can tell he's very delirious and I become very concerned about his mental health. The nurses and docs say that it's temporary and attributed it to "pumphead" from the heart/lung machine. When I go back home I did some research and found that it is most likely "post-op delirium" from the anesthesia & pain drugs they gave him.
Luckily on Friday, he has mostly gone back to normal, mentally. They have the feeding tube out and he is given oatmeal and eggs for breakfast. He's able to eat them but later in the day around 6:00pm he complains about not being able to breath. They slap a respirator type device on him that pushes air into his throat so that his airway and lungs expand. Everyone can see that this is very painful on his throat and he tries to remove it a few times. The nurses come and put the restraints back on him. The ENT docs come and take a look at him and say that his left vocal cord is paralyzed. He also has fluid/mucus in his lungs that need to be removed and the docs/nurses want him to try coughing it out. They also tried to suction it out by inserting a tube down his nose. This looked very, very painful and my dad tells me this in very hoarse whispers.
It's now Sunday, 6 days post op, and my dad cannot talk because of the damaged vocal cord. He tries to write what he wants but I think his weaken body and mind cause his hand writing to be very tough to decipher. He still has the feeding tube in, and the nurses continue to jam the suction tube in his nose to try and get the fluids/mucus out of his lungs. I try to get him to cough by putting a pillow to his chest to ease some of the pain. But after about 5-6 coughs he is winded and needs to stop. The heart doc has told me he also has bad kidneys and is why he's still puffy looking because all the fluids haven't drained yet. He also will have to get a pacemaker because his heart rate is not in sync after the surgery. And that the ENT and kidney specialists will see him tomorrow to see what to do next.
It looks like he's breathing hard all the time, he's very tired, and I think he is becoming very depressed. He wrote to the nurse in the middle of the night that "he's dying". This freaked me out this morning when I saw it and tried to reassure him he wasn't and he would be ok. He then writes to me asking why don't the doctors want to save him. I've just been trying to let him know they are doing everything they can and that he still needs to do his part like the coughing. But he just wonders why the docs cannot fix him.
Well that's it for now. He's awaiting the pacemaker, waiting to see how they are going to fix his vocal cord and lungs so that he can get off the feeding tube. They also need to evaluate his kidneys and see if he'll need dialysis.
If you've read this far then I want to thank you for listening as I needed someplace to vent. If there are any suggestions or recommendations my dad and I would greatly appreciate them.
First I would just like to thank everyone for sharing their experiences as it has been very helpful these past few weeks.
I just wanted to share my dad's story (he's 73 years old) which began about two weeks ago on 8/17/09. He woke up around 2 am with chest pains and in a cold sweat. He woke up my mom who then woke me up and I took him to the hospital since he refused that I call an ambulance. He gets stabilized and then 2 days later is transferred to the hospital in which his regular heart doctor worked. This doc had told my dad he would need a valve replacement over a year ago but my dad had held off for fear of the surgery I'm guessing. But after this mild heart attack my dad agrees to do it and it's scheduled for 8/24/09.
On the Thursday before the surgery the oral doctors come to look at my dad's teeth and said that due to poor hygiene he would need some of his teeth pulled out before the heart surgery. They didn't want any bacteria or infection to travel from his teeth/gums directly to his heart. So he gets 4 teeth pulled out on that Friday. The day after I go to visit him and he tells me that getting them pulled out was the most painful experience of his life and that he doesn't think the oral surgeons gave him any local anesthesia. I asked the oral dr. that came to check on him but he denied anyone would do that but he didn't do the actual pulling (this is bad omen #1).
I go home on that Saturday night and decide to come back Sunday to visit again. Sunday morning I get a call from my dad saying that he is bleeding out his mouth and no one can stop it. So I rush to the hospital to find that his mouth is bleeding from the extraction points. I ask the nurses what is going on and they think it might have been a blood thinner he was given. The worst part is that the oral surgeons see him 3 times over 12 hours or so and the best treatment they can give him is to have him pack gauge in his mouth to stop the bleeding. But every time he puts 2 new ones in they become soaked in blood after about 10 minutes and he needs to replace them. This happens for probably 12-16 hours until the nurses finally call the heart doctor cause he is losing so much blood that he fainted while being helped to use the restroom, and then needed a blood transfusion. The heart dr. gets the oral surgeon to come up and he finally decides to give him stitches and to "burn" the wound so that it seals. This works and it's like someone shut off a leaky faucet. Why didn't they do this in the very beginning...I have no idea (this is bad omen #2).
I stayed with him Sunday night and he finally gets some rest although I couldn't sleep all night. The next morning, Monday, he goes in for prep at 6:30am and surgery at 8:30am. My mom, sister and brother wait with me in the waiting room and the surgery is finally done at around 4:00pm. I talked to the surgeon and he said he had a Bicuspid Aortic Valve ever since he was born and it was replaced with a bovine tissue valve. He also had to get a Coronary Bypass Surgery Graft done. The surgeries took about 5 hours but he had some excessive bleeding that they had to clean up but that he was looking good as far as how the surgery went. We all see him for about 15 minutes before leaving since he is not expected to wake up til the next day.
The next day (Tuesday) we go see him and he still has the breathing tube in. He is barely awake but can wiggle his toes or grasp your hand if you tell him to. Since he is older and smaller than a normal person (5'1" about 100 lbs) we figure that all the drugs still haven't flushed from his body. The next night (Wednesday) I see him and he has a feeding tube inserted and he has restraints on. During the day when my sister visited him and they removed his breathing tube he started howling in pain for hours. When I see him he keeps asking me to remove his feeding tube and that his legs were being crushed by something although nothing were on them. I can tell he's very delirious and I become very concerned about his mental health. The nurses and docs say that it's temporary and attributed it to "pumphead" from the heart/lung machine. When I go back home I did some research and found that it is most likely "post-op delirium" from the anesthesia & pain drugs they gave him.
Luckily on Friday, he has mostly gone back to normal, mentally. They have the feeding tube out and he is given oatmeal and eggs for breakfast. He's able to eat them but later in the day around 6:00pm he complains about not being able to breath. They slap a respirator type device on him that pushes air into his throat so that his airway and lungs expand. Everyone can see that this is very painful on his throat and he tries to remove it a few times. The nurses come and put the restraints back on him. The ENT docs come and take a look at him and say that his left vocal cord is paralyzed. He also has fluid/mucus in his lungs that need to be removed and the docs/nurses want him to try coughing it out. They also tried to suction it out by inserting a tube down his nose. This looked very, very painful and my dad tells me this in very hoarse whispers.
It's now Sunday, 6 days post op, and my dad cannot talk because of the damaged vocal cord. He tries to write what he wants but I think his weaken body and mind cause his hand writing to be very tough to decipher. He still has the feeding tube in, and the nurses continue to jam the suction tube in his nose to try and get the fluids/mucus out of his lungs. I try to get him to cough by putting a pillow to his chest to ease some of the pain. But after about 5-6 coughs he is winded and needs to stop. The heart doc has told me he also has bad kidneys and is why he's still puffy looking because all the fluids haven't drained yet. He also will have to get a pacemaker because his heart rate is not in sync after the surgery. And that the ENT and kidney specialists will see him tomorrow to see what to do next.
It looks like he's breathing hard all the time, he's very tired, and I think he is becoming very depressed. He wrote to the nurse in the middle of the night that "he's dying". This freaked me out this morning when I saw it and tried to reassure him he wasn't and he would be ok. He then writes to me asking why don't the doctors want to save him. I've just been trying to let him know they are doing everything they can and that he still needs to do his part like the coughing. But he just wonders why the docs cannot fix him.
Well that's it for now. He's awaiting the pacemaker, waiting to see how they are going to fix his vocal cord and lungs so that he can get off the feeding tube. They also need to evaluate his kidneys and see if he'll need dialysis.
If you've read this far then I want to thank you for listening as I needed someplace to vent. If there are any suggestions or recommendations my dad and I would greatly appreciate them.
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and is now sedated on a ventilator and has tubes near his lungs to try and get some of the fluid out. He's also finally on dialysis. I had to "insist" that the heart docs get a lung specialist to look at his lungs...wtf? I will be asking for a kidney specialist to look at that tomorrow morning. His heart seems to be ok except for the need of a pacemaker, it's just all this other stuff...lungs, kidneys, vocal cord.