My heart attack journey - post op

November 2024 By Dave, PinkUk.

My experience of a heart attack and what you might expect. I looked like a Borg alien in a regeneration alcove (Star Trek fans will know what I mean!). I had loads of pads over my chest that were connected to what looked like a HiFi with six units

Part 1, Pre op | Part 2, Post op | Part 3 Recovery (Publishing in December)

Part two, post operation

Day one

One important fact I forgot to put in part one, pre op; is that I found out just how worried my best friend, Rob, was about the operation. He was really scared, thinking that I was going to die, bless him. I was telling him that I was not worried at all; all I was worried about was my spaniel, my baby boy, Stanley. But the poor bloke was nearly in tears when I last spoke to him; so now I had something else to worry about (when am I going to get worried about myself? LOL). I had to think of something to put his mind slightly at rest. So I rang a very close friend of mine, Con. I have known Con since I was 17 and we have been through a lot together. He knows how mentally determined I am and that I am a survivor. I gave Con, Rob’s number and asked him to give Rob a call to try and put him more at ease. I would love to know what he said as it seemed to work. Con told me afterwards, “You have a very good friend there, and I can tell you are very close.”

Waking up

After seeing that cobweb on the ceiling before I passed out under the anaesthetic, the next thing I knew was that I was in bed, very heavily sedated. I looked like a Borg alien in a regeneration alcove (Star Trek fans will know what I mean!). I had tubes coming out of my left arm, right arm and neck. I had loads of pads over my chest that were connected to what looked like a HiFi with six units (showing my age here, but for those who may not know what a HiFi is, especially younger people reading this: ‘HiFi’ stands for High Fidelity; they are separate but connected audio devices stacked on top of each other as a home audio centre. A tangle of electrical wires came out of my chest as you can see from the photo below. These wires were going to my heart and would be used to jump start my heart in case it stopped, like jump starting an old banger car. There was someone sat in a chair next to the bed reading a book. Later on, I found out that every patient has someone who stays with you until you have fully come round.

There are four bays in the cardiac unit, each with ten beds. Bay four, which I was in, is the critical care bay; the units go down in priority care order to bay one which is the bay you are before you go home, or are in when admitted, if you have no urgent needs or had been in for elective surgery. When I was first admitted I was in Bay Three, then I was moved to Bay Two and eventually into Bay One as the effects of the initial heart attack wore off.

As I was recovering, in the evening, I think, I heard from the main desk there was an emergency coming in. They wheeled a man into the bed space opposite me and plugged him into nearly as many ‘HiFi’ units as I was on. Later, I noticed his heart rate monitor reading was 74, which is normal. Then all of a sudden it went to 270. There were alarms going off, red lights flashing everywhere. Then I heard someone from the main desk shout “Crash unit bay four!”. Loads of nurses and doctors darted in and sorted him out. This happened four more times (poor sod). This time I heard a surgeon say, “He needs to be operated on, now”. They took him to the operating theatre for a heart bypass. Several hours later they wheeled him back to the bay opposite me. An hour later I saw his heart rate go off the scale again and the crash was called. I am not sure what happened to him after that, and for some strange reason I never asked. I wish I had.

They encourage you to sit up in a chair rather than lying in your bed all day due to the far better posture you have and help with the recovery of your heart and lungs. The next day they removed one of the HiFi units I was wired up to and took tubes out of my right arm and hand - one of them was the IV morphine on demand tube. This had been really effective because if the pain got too much, as it sometimes did, you could just pump a dose of morphine into your body, although it would only let you pump a certain amount in every 30 minutes. Then I was wheeled to Bay Two.

Out of intensive care

I may have the order of things and timings out by a day or so, as my memory of the days that followed is a bit misty and confusing; in fact, everything was confusing with a sort of brain fog. It was very hard to think and, to my surprise, I found thinking nearly as exhausting as attempting anything physical. Physical movement was uncomfortable – even just sitting up or moving in the bed, the slightest movement. But I told myself I just had to do my best.

I think it was day two or may be day three after the op that the nurses took me off the oxygen and told me that everything was going to plan; I might be going home on day five. They also said that day three was often the most difficult for pain. They also tell you will likely need to cough up a load of phlegm from your chest over the next few days. This was quite painful as you might imagine after a heart operation, so I tended to leave it until it became unbearable then cough up a lovely cocktail of phlegm and blood.

The pain was in my neck for some strange reason. Not only was it giving me a lot of pain but I did not have the energy to hold my head up; it was as if I had no muscles in my neck. It was one of the worst days of my life, I even remember saying to the nurses, just let me go. It was as if I had given up on life, which is not like me at all. It was the first time in my life that I have felt like giving up. It was a really low point for me. I asked the nurse for a neck brace, but they would not give me one. Day three was the day I will never forget. Still on the upside, things were on schedule for me to go home on day five.

Later on that day, I was taken for a routine x-ray, although I had to wait quite a while as the hospital was very short on porters. So along with the porter who wheeled the bed, a junior nurse also came along just to keep an eye. As we had to wait the porter wondered off, then I felt a load of phlegm on my chest. I tried to cough it up, but it would not come up, so I was trying like mad to get it up without coughing too much as it was so painful. The phlegm came out of my chest, but then got stuck in my throat. OMG I realised I couldn’t breathe and the phlegm was stuck in my throat. I’m going to die, choking on my own phlegm. This is not a good way to die. Fuck, what am I going to do? So I tugged on the nurse's leg pointing to my throat. I could see him thinking. What fuck are you doing? Then miraculously the phlegm came flying out. He then told me he was getting really worried as he did not know what to do as doing the Heimlich manoeuvre, a sort of abdominal first aid thrust to stop choking, would not have been ideal in my situation...

Pneumonia

I had been moved back to bay three and later that day it was discovered I had caught pneumonia; obviously this was not good. This resulted in my having an IV drip with antibiotics to treat the pneumonia. The good news was that my neck felt so much better, though still painful; I found it hard to hold my head up.

More importantly, it was the first day Rob brought Stanley in for a visit after the operation, which cheered me up no end. Even though it was the longest we had been apart, it was nowhere near as emotional than when I was first admitted, as I knew he was OK and that he was eating and drinking plus he was not too upset being away from me. He knew where I was and that he had not been abandoned for the fourth time in his little life. However it was still emotional; all I wanted to do is hug him to bits; but we had to be very careful, the last thing we needed was for him to jump on my chest and accidentally rip open the stitches. It was also very exhausting for me to do anything and the slightest bit of movement would make me very short of breath. I could just about manage to have him sat on my lap while gently pushing him away from my chest.

I was now able to walk short distances and was encouraged to walk about as much as I could. This was to get the circulation going and to exercise my heart, legs and lungs. Walking about was very slow as you’d expect. Rob had lent me a walking stick and it came in really handy as I had poor balance and was terrified of falling over. It was not the actual falling but the getting back up that worried me the most, as I knew it would be the most painful. I have always had balance problems, along with no sense of timing or coordination. I am about as flexible as a brick, along with being tone deaf. Apart from all that, I think I would have been a good singer-dancer.

What I was getting most worried about was having a sneezing fit as that would have been unbelievably painful. Going home now on day five was out of the question due to the infection in my chest.

I had now been moved into Bay Four, but still with the drip, but no sign of recovery from the pneumonia. As I was moving about a bit my bowels were stirred up, I finally needed a shit. It must have been the first one for over five days and I knew it would not be pleasant. Standing up and sitting down was quite painful and along with a drip in my arm it was quite awkward, then there was the pushing that would be required to get the bugger out. Eventually it did come out, and by goodness it was a big one! I felt as if I had just been fisted by Mike Tyson plus I'd also blocked the toilet. When I told the nurse, he laughed, put an out of service sign up then sent some poor sod to fix it.

There were a few occasions when a patient who had an elective operation (so they had an appointment, rather than those like me who were admitted via A&E) would come in, get into the hospital bed ready for their operation the next day only later to be told there’s an emergency and they can't operate now, you will have to go home. I felt really sorry for these people, some had been waiting over a year for their operation. Goodness knows what they were thinking as they got changed back into their clothes. The stress must have been immense.

Going back to pre-op phase and to my reunion with my baby boy, Stanley: I still couldn’t get over just how emotional it was. Rob had taken some pics and stuck them on Facebook. That ‘outed’ to loads of friends that I was in hospital, as I had not said anything on social media, or even told anyone apart from a handful of close friends. I did not want the fuss or to cause people to worry. This resulted in my getting loads of messages wishing me well and expressing how shocked people were, that I was the last person they would have thought would have a heart attack. I found it annoying as I had to reply to so many people. Anyway one friend, Sarah, took one of the pics of Stanley at my reunion and used it to make a 'get well soon' card. That was such a thoughtful thing to do. I now have it framed and on my living room wall. Every time I look at it, it makes me smile.

Chest drain

As the pneumonia symptoms were not going away, they came up with a mobile x-ray machine and checked me over in my hospital bed. When the results came back the doctors and surgeon came round and said we think you have fluid in your chest cavity, and you will need an ultrasound. Later that day they gave me the ultrasound which confirmed that I did have fluid in my chest cavity; they thought it was over one litre and that some of it may have come from the drip. So they stopped the drip and told me I would have to have a chest drain.

Chest drains I remember from my medic training in the army; they did not sound the most pleasant of things. I can now confirm this; it is the most uncomfortable thing I have had done to me ever; it was painful and just plain horrible. Every time I breathed I could feel a jabbing pain and saw fluid go down a clear tube into a bucket below the bed. The first bucket took a few hours to fill up. As the nurse took it away, I told her Stanley would love that poured over his cribbles. The reply was ‘Urrr’ with some laughter. I did not get any sleep that night, with that bloody tube coming out of my chest. After 24 hours they removed the tube, with a huge 1.5 litres of reddish, gooey liquid - gravy for Stanley (joke). I found it a bit easier to breathe now but it still hurt taking deeper breaths. Anyway, at last there was room in my chest for the lungs to expand more.

I was still sleeping a lot and was only awake for may be for an hour each time before dozing off again. It was very exhausting having visitors even for short visits as I found it so hard to concentrate. Don't get me wrong I loved having them, plus it helped break the day up. Thank you if you were one of the visitors and are reading this. Everyone one was so kind. One morning I looked down at my left foot. OMG... my foot was massively swollen and was so disproportionately large compared to my leg it looked like I had a Hobbit foot from the Lord of the Rings. I was informed that this was because the blood stuck in my foot and was trying to get out. As they had removed the main vein (the body’s blood motorway to use car terms) my body had to work out all the new ‘A’ roads and which smaller veins to start to use now. I was told to raise my leg and it would go down in time.

I was also doing all the exercises that they were telling you to do, especially the walking around the hospital. This I did this in abundance many times a day. It was just walking round the ward; the cardiac unit was all self-contained, all on one floor. I repeatedly walked round and round. It was still quite painful across the chest and, if I did anything manual, I became very short of breath. I had just given up smoking after 45 years, and 10 months so that would not have helped. Even getting up was painful. I had to learn not to use the upper body to do this and instead use the leg muscles as much as possible.

My weight and loss of appetite

The other unpleasant experience was my loss of appetite. I was not eating very much at all. Everything tasted the same. I knew I had to eat and tried to force myself, but I seemed to get full up easily. One recent visit, Rob took some photos and I was horrified when I saw them. I lost so much weight. I looked like I had just come out of Auschwitz, my legs and arms were so skinny. My weight was 74 kg, just under 12 stone and with my being 193cm (six feet four inches) tall this was not good. I had a Body Mass Index of only 19.9 which is on the low side. I should weigh about 80 kg with a BMI of 21.5 – a healthy middle range.

Getting out of there - before they let you go home, you have to pass three tests.

1. Test One: to have someone to look after you 24/7 for the next few days. I am having HIV This meant every other day someone from the hospital’s HIV unit (The Lawson Unit) would come over and see me, making sure I was OK. I had been talking to Sussex Beacon to see if I could stay there for a week or so because, as live alone apart from Stanley, I did not want to put a burden on any of my friends. They would have to stay with me in my flat. The Sussex Beacon provides specialist care and support for people living with HIV. Their services help people to regain their independence and well-being. They have a ten-bed inpatient unit, with therapy rooms and larger rooms for group activities. They also have a beautiful landscaped garden for patients and visitors to enjoy all year round. This was all arranged and was looking forwards to it. I had been told by doctors that it was likely I would be discharged in the next day or so. By then we were on day [18].
2. Test two: a physio test. My test was to walk up and down two flights of stars in the hospital unaided. I did found this extremely hard and had to stop several times because I was very short of breath; I managed it and they said I had passed the test.
3. Test three: the head nurse had to be satisfied that I was well enough and that all the medications had been sorted, but also that I could cope when I got home. This is always a serious decision. After all, the nurse has to sign the release papers so she was responsible. She sat down with me and asked me how I felt and was satisfied I could be discharged. She then said she had rung Sussex Beacon and unfortunately they wouldn’t have a room for five days. I was desperate to get out of the hospital, after all, I had been stuck in there for 19 days by now. I just wanted to be home with Stanley; I was so looking forward to him being happy that I was back with him. Luckily. he's not the sort of dog that likes to walk all over me continually once we are reunited, so I knew it would be OK with him near me. If he walked over my chest he probably would have fallen through it and I would not have been in a very good place for help. Another close friend, James, very kindly said he would stay at mine until I got a lot better, he had two days off work so could look after me 24/7 on those days. Then, after that, he said he would still say at mine, crash on the sofa and be a sort of nurse. I did not tell the real nurse that James would have to go to work so he could not look after me for eight or so hours a day. She might not have let me go home if I had told her the whole situation.

I was determined to recover as quickly and as best I could. So now, after 19 days in hospital, I could finally go home!

A thank you

I would like to thank the hospital staff here, not just the nurses and doctors, but the whole team. This includes the cleaning staff and volunteers. They were amazing. This is important because they help keep your spirits up and your morale. When you are recovering, this is very important. The happier you feel, the quicker and better you recover. I still need to go back and thank them all, plus give them a thank you present. They need to feel that they are not being taken for granted and in these stressful times for everyone, hospital staff need their morale boosted too..