Finally Back (but will the Blog slip down?)

Whew...the surgery went well, I came home, rested up a bit and THEN, hubby had some mild chest pains and ended up having open-heart surgery (triple bypass) in Roanoke Carilion's state-of-the-art cardiac unit. It's as if we were taking turns!

Friends drove me there and back every day he was in the unit, because Roanoke Memorial is in the midst of renovations so it was either walk a mile into the parking garage (and back) or have dear friends from church drop me at the hospital entrance and then pick me back up there.

Dick did amazingly well. He is in excellent physical shape, strong heart muscle, doesn't smoke or drink. Dr. Baker and an assisting cardiac physician said his body was actually creating new arteries to and from his heart! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Instead of actually replacing three arteries, they took a short one from his shoulder and another slightly longer one from his thigh. One of them replaced two clogged arteries.

He was walking the next day (Saturday) and they wanted to send him home the following Monday, but he asked to return to the 9th floor and get one solid night's sleep before we brought him home on Tuesday. As you can imagine, the CSICU isn't conducive to sleep! Beepers beep, rings sound, nurses hurry past the 12 units.

He is home now. They told him he couldn't drive for 4 weeks and he is having a hard time with that! As for me, I can drive now, but I'm not certain I can last for four weeks of constant instruction from the passenger seat: 'Turn here, it's a short cut. No, don't take that street. You're going too fast. You're going way too slow. It's raining and your wipers aren't working right. I TOLD you this was the wrong way to get there....' ARGHHHH

But I am so glad he is home, and well. And I'm home, and well. Sadie Mae went into a frenzy every time a vehicle came down our gravel driveway and it wasn't her guy. Now she sleeps curled up into his back. The hospital gave Dick a big teddy bear to hug so he can protect the incision where they cracked open his chest; Sadie Mae seems to understand. She's just glad he is BACK.

BTW: There is a site called CaringBridge.org (it's being worked on today, to add Spanish) out of Minnesota. You enter a person's name who is having serious surgery or has cancer, and visitors to the site can get daily updates on someone's progress and can leave messages for the patient. It saved me over 300 phone calls and contacts, and when Dick read the messages, he was in tears.