My heart attack journey - recovery

December 2024 By Dave, PinkUk.

As I said in Part 2, I was determined to recover as quickly and as best I could. So now, after 19 days in hospital, I could finally go home! But this was just the next stage of my recovery and the whole experience.

Part 1, Pre op | Part 2, Post op | Part 3, Recovery

Part three, recovering at home

As I said in Part 2, I was determined to recover as quickly and as best I could. So now, after 19 days in hospital, I could finally go home!

My friend James arrived exactly on time on the big day to collect me - my ‘release date' after my 19 days of a pneumonia-induced sentence. I was using the walking stick that Rob lent me as and aid in case I felt I was going to fall as we left. With James carrying all my stuff, I went to the front desk and thanked all the staff, and, of course, they were commenting about Stanley saying they were going to miss him; oh, and then almost as an afterthought wished me all the best and that I would recover quickly – no I'm being unfair.

We'd ordered a taxi which came along in no time and I managed to get in after some slow easing into the seat. But then the seat belt alarm kept going off as I hadn't clicked in the belt; the problem was I could not have the belt going across my chest as it was far too tight and would not do me any good if there was even more pressure on my chest from the driver braking. In the end I clicked it on and, with my hand, held it away from my chest. I asked the driver to take it easy, especially going over any bumps or speed ramps in the road. I just found out how many potholes are really out there as I felt each one jolt with a sharp pain across my chest. The driver kept apologising and he did a sterling job driving slowly and avoiding as many as he could. This caused me to realise just how many potholes there are in Brighton and Hove's streets.

Life back at home

It was such a relief to be back in my own home for all the obvious reasons. Straight away my mood lifted; but I also felt so much better because I realised that I'd successfully moved into the next phase of my recovery. I was now feeling well enough not to need hospital care. Don't get me wrong, I still needed a lot of care and for someone to be with me 24 hours a day. I could not do any house chores or even prepare any meals myself. I was still not strong enough to look after myself for any length of time. But I was so happy to be back in my own home and I had a good friend to see to all my needs. As I've explained, while I was recovering from pneumonia in hospital James had been staying at mine, looking after Stanley and making the flat ready for when I was discharged. I was astounded when I got home. Not only had he cleaned the place but he'd practically gutted it and with a deep clean so that I almost had to grab a pair of sunglasses! The stainless steel taps gleamed under the kitchen ceiling lights. On each work surface was a neatly placed antiseptic hand wash dispenser; as I said, I was paranoid about getting another infection, after getting the chest infection in the hospital. I sat down on the sofa and just admired the place. It's great having OCD friends!

Stanley was going crazy now we were together and both at home. I had a job keeping him away from my chest. Meanwhile, I knew I still had to do as much limited exercise as I could to aid my recovery. This would involve walking about to build my leg muscle up again and get my lungs working a bit. Normally I would lie down on the sofa, as I would if I had a cold or was not feeling well, but I made sure I was sitting up. Getting out of bed was a mission. You don't realise how much you use your arms to get out of bed and stand up. However the doctors explained I had to avoid using my arms, I had to, but just the muscles in my legs. Getting dressed was also a mission; the hardest part was putting my socks on, as you have to bend the upper part of your body to get the blighters on.

James would take Stanley on his walks, all I could do was walk round the square, very slowly and using a stick. James would come with me in case I needed assistance. I was not using the stick to help me walk; it was just for balance as the last thing I wanted to do was to fall over. Getting up would have been horrible.

After the first day or so one of my neighbours in my block messaged me after seeing my lanky cripple-like shape shuffle round the garden square to ask if everything was alright. Obviously, he hadn't seen me for a while and now he could see I was struggling to walk. I explained what had happened and that I had just come out of hospital and was recovering at home. He asked if I needed anything or wanted any help. I said I was fine and that I had a friend staying to look after me. Then I remembered there was something. I asked if he knew if anyone one had an old chair that won't go rusty. I was really worried about having a shower (I don't have a bath, just a wet room shower). “I can't stand up for long and I'm worried about falling over when I have a shower,” I explained. The kind neighbour said he would see what he could do. Just a few minutes later I noticed another neighbour drive out of the block gates and return about half an hour later. I didn't think anything of it. A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. I struggled to get up to answer the door (James was out), and to my total surprise the other neighbour had a brand-new fold away chair, that was OK to get wet. Wow how sweet was that!

Challenges of looking after yourself

When James went back to work for the first time, I realised I could not get out of the flat, as I could not open the communal fire doors. You had to pull them hard to open them. Pushing the door was okay as I could use my back to push rather than my front. This meant that I was house-bound in the day until James came back from work. It really makes you realise when you are disabled how thoughtless the people who design building parts are. Stan was fine as James would take him to work and he was used to hanging out with James. When Stan came back with James he had all his usual bounding dog-energy as he was so pleased to back with me. By the way, when I'd got a bit better, James was banned from taking him to work on weekdays. Not because he was too much to handle, but because the staff, mainly friendly younger women, were told by their bosses that they did not get as much work done as they should when they were playing with Stan and giving him too much attention. James kindly stayed at mine for a fortnight.

The thing that surprised me the most of all during my recovery at home was just how mentally exhausted I would get. Not only did I find I was talking quite slowly as I found myself thinking about each word, rather than words just rolling off the tongue. But even just thinking was extremely tiring. I would answer an email and it would feel like I had just done a day's work.

More neighbour kindness

After the first two weeks and James had finished his nursing, two other neighbours (Geoff and Paul) started helping out. (Yes, I know what you're thinking… now I'm writing this I've just realised how lucky I am having all these great neighbours; I must be quite well-liked, or just lucky to have kind neighbours, but more probably because they loved Stan.) They even created a WhatsApp group and named it after my wee boy ‘Stan the man'. They would offer to come out with me and walk Stanley as I was still not strong enough to have him on a lead. One of the kind neighbours, Geoff, had a bad Covid infection and he found Stanley a great help and company when he was recovering. Stan has two falcon bells on his collar to warn wild animals when he's on the hunt; one day Geoff said to me that he hears the bells when Stanley is running round the square chasing the foxes and it wakes him up. I apologised but he explained that he loved it. With Long Covid he sometimes had a fever and sometimes he wasn't sure if he was in reality or not. “I hear Stan's bells and that gives me a route to get back into reality,” he said. So my Stan is therapy for other people, too! Now I had been home a week, we arranged that Geoff would accompany me on two walks a day in case I needed help: a walk at 8am and then 8pm just round the local park. Oh, by the way Geoff, is also allergic to dogs and coming into contact with our canine friends causes him to suffer skin reactions. But we soon worked out that if he wore gloves his allergy was kept in check. I also became very nervous of bumping into people due to my chest still being very fragile.

This all worked out really well as it meant I was walking a lot further, Geoff was getting more exercise and Stanley was walking, at long last, with me. Plus, I would walk him round the square, which he does off his lead and I worked out a route in and out of the flat (we have three entrances and luckily I live on the ground floor) where I only had to pull slightly on one corridor door. Stanley was ecstatic as at long last he could walk with me, albeit on short walks round the local park. It would be a while before I could walk him on a lead as he can pull suddenly very hard if he sees some prey, especially a cat or smells a fox. He's a cross between US military film character Forest Gump and a Hirogen, a type of nomadic hostile hunter alien (yes, another Star Trek analogy: as its ‘all about the prey').

I was told by the doctors that I would not be able to have Stanley on a lead until six weeks after the operation to give my chest time to heal so I decided to stick to this. Normally I would have trusted him on a lead after a month, but because he can suddenly bolt really hard if he sees or smells some prey, I decided to stick to this six-week rule. Mind you, lately he has started doing it a lot less. The route round the park involves a slight slope and I would become short of breath, breathing heavily when I reached the top. I would also be breathing very heavily if I exerted myself.

I was still very concerned with the amount of weight that I had lost, still weighing 74kg (just over 11 and a-half stone), so a weight loss of 6kg. I was making sure I was eating three good meals a day. I have now worked out why I had lost so much weight. If you lie in bed for a week, you lose 10% of your body muscle and I was in hospital for nearly three weeks, and I was still not moving around much. (I would have thought the care staff would have told me this; maybe they did and it had not registered or I had forgotten. Remember, I found it very hard to concentrate since the operation. To make things more complicated, I have a problem with my pancreas, the part of the body which controls blood sugar levels, where it's not absorbing important enzymes that the body needs. Plus, I often suffer from really bad diarrhoea in the mornings likely caused by the various medications I'm taking. To counteract the pancreas problems, I had been put on a drug called Creon. But since Brexit when the UK left the EU in 2020, there's been supply chain issues so trying to get hold of Creon is like trying to get hold of rocking horse shit! It's been in the news about the shortage, along with some epilepsy drugs. You get what you vote for. Before I had my heart attack I had run out. And before I had run out, I'd been rationing myself to one tablet a day, when I should be on four. The hospital managed to source some, so I was on my full does, but as soon as I got home I decided to ration myself to one a day again. While I am writing this, I have just 10 tablets left which will last me ten days on my rations. I will need to keep checking with my GP if there's any more supplies.

Cardio exercise: pushing myself to the brink

The NHS cardiac team had been ringing me at least once a week to see how I was getting on. On one of these calls they suggested that I should go onto phase three of the “recovery process”. This meant doing more physio at a gym run by cardiac physiotherapist. There would also be cardiac nurses present.

I went along to my first physio session not having a clue what to expect. I turned up and my first thoughts were OMG what a load of geriatrics. I hope they have a defibrillator handy! I was the only one there who had a heart bypass; the rest had stents or valve replacements, plus I was also the youngest there (Remember I'm no spring chicken as I'm in my early sixties). The physio course is part-funded by a local heart charity, The Sussex Heart Charity (who are not to be confused with the big national heart charity British Heart Foundation). They buy and supply the equipment that patients use in physio sessions. So huge thanks to The Sussex Heart Charity.

First, the cardiac team take your pulse, so it gives a comparison point. I think mine was about 70 per minute (I did not tell them, as they did not ask, that I walked some of the way and I'm tall, long-legged and don't walk slowly!). Then they assess your heart by placing a monitoring device on your chest to show what is a dangerous level of heart beat; I was told that my heart rate should not go above 94 beats per minute. I was thinking That's it' if it goes above that when I'm in a state of shock after I see the next hike in my gas bill'. I was even more shocked at this low limit when I found out what exercise was involved during the physio; I expected it to be gentle exercises. But the physio session was circuit training - cardio vascular. That now makes sense when I think about it given the need to get my heart back to a healthy state. There were four exercise stations of different activities where you do each one for a minute and do three circuits. You start off with a 20-minute warm up and some stretching. I was knackered after that. The final part was a 20-minute ‘warm down' with more stretching. Then you were not allowed to leave until your pulse had dropped to below your starting pulse plus 10%, so in my case 77. They give you a scale of 7 to 20 (a 1-6 reading is if you're sleeping to sitting on your ass and not doing much) of how hard you think you are working; you're not allowed to go above 14.

So I started the exercises. I found it a lot harder than expected. I've done a lot of hard circuit training in the past so it was not as if I'd had no experience of doing it. It was not long before my pulse went above 94, so I was told to slow down. After each week they raised the maximum pulse rate until it ended up at 120. The last couple of weeks I was getting in the zone as I was really enjoying it, pushing myself as hard as I could and my pulse reached 140. One of the physiotherapists kept telling me to slow down but I was becoming more and more irritated with her warnings. I know how hard I can push myself which is way beyond what most people would endure. A couple of things I found quite amusing: two of the other people there were trying to keep up with me, not very well, I might add. They had a telling off from the physiotherapist for straining themselves. I did not what to say anything about my physical endurance former lifestyle. So being the youngest there, I said something that I never thought I'd ever say, “Of course I'm going faster than you. I'm only 62!”. You had to wait and rest until your pulse went back to the safe base rate plus 10%.

The head physiotherapist also explained I had to slow down otherwise I would have to wait ages after I had finished. I was resisting as much as I could to get away with from slowing down. So my target rate was 80 and, after finishing the last exercise, it was 140. They were expecting me to be sitting there for 20 minutes or so. As soon as the warm down had finished, they checked my heart rate; it was around 80. All I got was ‘Is that right? Let's have a look.' Then ‘Oh… you can go now' and I was the first one to go. The physio course went on for six weeks and the following days after each session I could feel it doing my muscles good and making them stronger. I'd had experience of this sort of muscle pain. After this early period, I felt a lot stronger and could do a 10km dog walk at a fast pace, though I still have to slow right down at a slight slope and get very short of breath. Nevertheless I was determined to build my muscle mass, especially in my legs. This was not for me but more for Stanley. He was definitely getting happier as he realised I was finally about to take him on long walks. Though his favourite route, which seemed to be where lots of pheasants nested, I could only do every couple of weeks as it was a hard walk. Stan could finally go bananas chasing pheasant smells.

They say you recover most of your physical strength after 12 weeks; by then I was able to do most things, but I was not fully recovered. At time of writing, it's been nine months since the op. Although I can do most things, I still get out of breath quite quickly if I do anything strenuous, and if I take in a deep breath, I can feel it across my chest. I am on phase four of the recovery and this is a physio and a training session where you have to pay to attend; it's basically circuit training but run by a qualified cardiac trainer.

As my recovery was improving, I was not too bothered about bumping into other people. People (well, let’s call them out as students :)) at a bus stops gaggle, and don't let you pass. I could not just barge into them if they did not have manners to make space for people to pass.

Reflections

I hope you have found this story and my journey through the stages of emergency and gradual recovery interesting. Some people are only in hospital for five days after a quadruple heart by-pass and have no complications, rather than the 19 days that I was in hospital with complications, mainly pneumonia. I felt lucky to have friends like James who looked after me at home once I was discharged. I've always been lucky enough to have close friends and throughout my life I've really I've appreciated them, especially as I live alone with Stanley, though I have kind neighbours too.

There are long-lasting changes. I have a life sentence now for Aspirin and anti-cholesterol statins. I have to take them every day for the rest of my life. The blood thinners that I only have to take for a year, which I will be glad about as my blood will clot quicker if I bleed. I suspect that it was smoking that caused the cholesterol damage but we will never know.

We are all lucky in the UK to have a free at point of use health service. But the NHS is under strain. It affects the service that it can provide. No matter what the politicians are saying, this damages patients chances of recovery, and more people will die. It's because of the workload and stress that health workers are under. How can this not be the explanation? The health workers, whether doctors, nurses, care workers or physiotherapists, were all amazing and I would like to thank them again. They not only looked after my medical needs but also my mental state especially with me worrying about Stan. If it wasn't for them, I'd be dead.

If you get a pain across the chest that you have not felt before always bear in mind that it may be a heart attack so in the UK ring 111 straight away.