"Healing A Heart"

My husband and I spent the last few weeks at an Atlanta area hospital. This stay was prompted by chest pains that left my husband doubled over and unable to speak. I took him to his cardiologist, at the hospital, who ordered a catherization of his heart, which revealed the need for triple bypass surgery.

Upon hearing that he would need this surgery, I did what I always do in times of crisis, I cried. I then tried to tell myself that bypass surgery is a procedure his doctors perform several times a week. I spent the time after the decision was made to do open heart surgery going back and forth between being worried, scared and crying, and being rational and calm.

My husband and I had an entire week to worry, and let our anxiety levels build, because the surgery couldn't be done until all of his Plavix, a medication he has been on since receiving stints a few years ago, was out of his system.

He was admitted on a Tuesday and had the catherization. The Plavix levels were checked almost daily and it was finally determined that the surgery would be on the following Monday.

There are several things that had to be done the night prior to the surgery such as; blood being drawn every hour to test his glucose levels, and being bathed several times , in his case by me, with an antibacterial wash provided to us by his nurse.

Sunday night he obeyed all the surgical rules, and I bathed him and helped in anyway that I could. Bright and early Monday morning we were all set. I had hugged him, kissed him, and cried...it was go time.

The nurse came in and told him that transportation was on the way to get him, and then about two minutes later she was back. She then said that she had gotten a phone call, and that my husband's surgery had been "cancelled".

I was stunned. The first thing I did was ask her if she was serious, at which point she assured me that she was. I said "but I've already cried and everything." None of our protests mattered. There had evidently been an emergency or something that amounted to my husband being "bumped" from the schedule and we had no choice but to wait until the next day.

We tried to entertain ourselves by talking about some of the motivated workers we had encountered during our stay. They were numerous. There was one that my husband asked for clean towels who gave him a very quick response of "that ain't my job."

There was another man riding on a machine that seemed to be polishing the hallway floors. He was riding up and down the hall at the same rate of speed, ultra-slow, with a completely emotionless expression on his face until somebody said something to him about the fact that it was almost five o'clock, at which point he sped up and began turning the machine on a dime.

I also shared with him that I had gotten on the elevator with another motivated employee who was sighing and making noises to such an extent that I had to ask if she was okay. She said "No I'm not feeling good, and I'm tired." I said that I was sorry to hear that, and I asked her if she thought she might be getting sick. She looked at me, very seriously, and she said "No, but I worked yesterday." Wow!! Two days in a row...seriously??...is that like pulling a double?? I work five days a week ..I'll be dead if I'm not careful.

The waiting another day was hard, to say the least, and it meant that the bathing ritual and blood being drawn every hour had to be repeated that night, but we survived it. My husband is my hero, if it had been me, I think I would have lost my mind completely.

Tuesday morning he was to be the first "case". They came for him at around 7 a.m. and I cried again. The nurse informed me that I would need to take everything out of the room and move down to the ICU Red waiting room where the surgeon would have someone give me reports on how the surgery was progressing.

The first report that I received wasn't until 9a.m. There was a little patient representative reporter person, who gave these updates, and he came over and said "Mrs. Foster, the surgery has begun". I received a second report at 9:40. He said "Mrs. Foster, your husband is now on the bypass machine"..

This was information that I didn't want to know. I wanted to just yell are you insane?? Why would I want to know that??? I've got an idea. Since you're not a reporter for Star magazine I'm not going to be needing all of the gory details, let's try and use statements like "it's all going well" or "it's almost over"..

After that all I could manage to think about for the next few hours was that my husbands heart wasn't beating...I mean his valves were hooked to some sort of a machine or something like that, but overall it was just more than I could wrap my mind around.

When I finally got the report that it was over and had gone well I almost went down in a dead faint. I had been sleeping in a chair for seven days and had raw nerves as a bonus.

Two hours or so, after the surgery was over the little patient representative guy came over and informed me that I could "go back and see my loved one". I was both anxious and apprehensive about seeing my husband with all of those tubes everywhere, and hooked to all of those machines, not the least of which was the ventilator.

Again, I cried . After this initial visit, I was allowed to go back every two hours to see him. This happened three consecutive times, and I was asked to leave very shortly after arriving for each visit. Not by his nurses, or a doctor, but by my husband himself.

He was saying things to me like "Okay, I'm resting now" and shooing me out with hand gestures. I left and tried again each time until the third time when he said "okay, I'll see you upstairs". Upstairs meaning when he was moved from ICU to CCU. When he said that, I looked at him and said "so you don't want me to come back here for anymore of the ICU visits?" and he said no he did not.

I had a hard time with this because I wasn't even trying to talk to him, I was just standing there next to his bed. The allotted time for visitation in ICU was 20 minutes per visit, and I was getting 20 to 30 seconds at best. Well, needless to say I left with my feelings hurt.

On Wednesday afternoon, I got the news that my husband was being moved upstairs to CCU. I was so excited. We would be in a private room ( sleeping on a couch in the public like I had done the night before in the ICU waiting room has never been something I'm all that big on) and he had made it!! He was leaving ICU.

I grabbed the bags we were living out of, and headed upstairs to meet him. It didn't take me long to realize that he wasn't feeling as good about things as I was. He was extremely nervous and uptight. The first three days out of surgery we sat in that room together, in the dark. No blinds open, no TV, no phone, no communication, no noise whatsoever. For those of you who know me..trying to remain sane in complete and total silence ...well...enough said.

When Thursday rolled around the nurses were saying things to us about needing to "get his wires pulled". The first time I heard this I was like...Wires? What wires? I found out later that they were referring to small wires that had probes on the ends, and they were attached to my husband's heart. They were to be removed basically by being yanked out through two holes left in my husbands stomach from his drainage tubes.

The huge concern the nurses had for us was that if the wires weren't "pulled" by Friday we wouldn't be allowed to go home until Monday. As luck would have it, his wires were "pulled" on Friday, and on Saturday he was discharged.

The drive home was the longest ride of my life. We were told that he would have to ride in the backseat for the next month because his chest wouldn't be healed well enough to tolerate an airbag deploying. I was never happier to be home than I was that afternoon.

The past month has been an extremely hard one, but we were also reminded of how very blessed we are. We have family and friends that go above and beyond to help us in anyway that they can.

We had, and continue to have, prayers going up for us in numbers so large I would never be able to count them. There are times when God slows your life down, and even though the process may be a hard one, it can be very valuable. Valuable not only for health reasons, but because it becomes a reminder of all that we do have on any given day, and so we stop to heal... as well as to appreciate....