Frankensteined...

I have metal staples from ankle to groin on my left leg. I have metal staples on the chest bone. I have a few stitches on my rib-cage. Apparently they also took a vein from the mammary area. Surgery was two weeks ago Friday. I came home a week later. I had run some errands with assistance the day of and the day after, but none since then. I have not yet been able to walk outside. In the house I hobble around and do my physio exercises in the warmth of the laundry room sunshine. I showered at the hospital, on my own, with the leg completely wrapped up in black garbage bags and taped snugly, along with the IV on the right wrist wrapped with plastic as well. I have not showered at home yet as I have not regained my balance sufficiently to do so, but that is the Thursday night task. 

On an interesting side-note, surgery was typically three to four, perhaps six hours... I went under at 1pm and everything was a complete black void until I heard a voice saying "It is 11pm, you should wake up..." Having been on extra pain medication for the first couple days and a diuretic for the duration, I was pretty much up less than every hour, the walking dead, head tilted to the left, eyes glazed over, using the walker without thought nor care except to get to where I needed to go and back. I felt bad for the nurses on duty who had to unhook me... every single time... I had to get up... ten times the first night... and more the next day... I did appreciate the fact that things hit me considerably harder than most of the patients. I could hear and see everything, even though my eyes were closed and it looked as though I was sleeping. 

Although I had time to attend pre-admission clinics, read the material, practice what I could do and not do, I was woefully unprepared. Any questions asked were the ones most ignored, during, before and after, and the ones which would have made recovery a bit less strained. Ah well, c'est la vie... My hope was, and is, that I may feel less tired than I had before, and that perhaps I will feel more alive as time goes on.

(Quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery)