Heart Surgery: 2nd Anniversary

March 9, 2024, at home

SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF MY HEART SURGERY !!!

Today marks the second anniversary of my Quadruple Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery !!! The photo below, taken by my wife in the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, shows my state of affairs the day AFTER my surgery.

(If blurred, to see the photo, just click/tap on "Learn more," then on "See photo." I have also included a composite photo of my chest wounds and healing in the comment section below.)

In the photo below, I am breathing using a ventilator tube stuck down my throat. I have a needle (catheter) stuck in a vein in my neck with some sort of apparatus attached. I am being heavily monitored with electrodes stuck all over my body. I also have two electrodes attached directly onto my heart with the wires sticking out of my chest.

This is only the beginning of my medical story. I would have two more surgeries on my chest two months later in May 2022.

Here is how it happened. On March 9, 2022, I had my quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery. My surgeon first removed part of a vein in my left thigh to be cut into four pieces and used for my heart surgery.

After my heart surgery, I returned home after about a week in the Intensive Care Unit and in a regular hospital room. I started physical therapy and occupational therapy at home and then soon began cardiac rehabilitation at a nearby facility, using machines to strengthen my arms and legs.

I soon started to experience severe pain within my chest, so my wife took me to the hospital emergency room on May 13, 2022. I was admitted to the hospital, where it was determined that I required further surgery. 

On May 19, 2022, a different surgeon made another incision, this time eight inches long vertically, to remove metal sternal plates because the screws became loose, plus he tended to a staph infection that developed within my chest. The plates were holding my breastbone together, purposely broken so that the surgeon could access my heart for my surgery. I think he replaced the plates with wire which is typically used to hold the pieces of the breastbone together for healing.

My chest remained open for about a week, with a wound vacuum constantly sucking on my chest to further remove the infection and discharge.

On May 25, 2022, a third surgeon closed my chest. He clipped off the tips of my ribs and reattached my chest muscle flaps to my body. He affixed seven sutures which left me with eight holes in my chest from my lower neck to my upper belly. The wound vacuum was then reattached to my chest to further remove infection and to pull the wounds closer together to make them heal faster.

I remained in the hospital but was soon transferred to a nearby physical rehabilitation facility on June 3, 2022. I remained there until July 21, 2022, the day before my wife's birthday, after a total of seventy (70) challenging days away from home (not including the heart surgery).

At the facility, I engaged in physical therapy and occupational therapy almost every day, plus wound care which involved the continuation of the wound vacuum continuously (24/7) sucking on my chest, which included excruciatingly painful dressing changes every two or three days. The vacuum was removed shortly before I returned home.

At home, I continued to heal and get slowly stronger with the help of a physical therapist and an occupational therapist ... and my wife's healthy cooking and much help from my mother. I never returned to cardiac rehabilitation which was most likely the cause of my medical problems.

Now, two years later, my chest is still numb and still slightly sore.

I was just beginning to gain my strength when I got hit with more medical challenges in 2023: two spinal surgeries, one surgery in September 2023 to remove an abscess in a disk, and one six-hour-long surgery in October to install a metal rod to strengthen my collapsing spine due to a bone infection.

So, now, here in early 2024, I am once again regaining my strength, even with further medical issues.

I am now in the midst of yet another six-week-long daily regimen of intravenous antibiotics infusions at home (with my home nurse and my wife) three times per day that started at the hospital on February 9, 2024, continuing when I arrived at home eight days later, and is still continuing. I entered the hospital on the February 9 with shortness of breath and a painful right ankle, which was swollen with a bone infection and an infection under the skin in the surrounding areas. 

During my last time in the hospital several weeks ago, using an X-ray, two CT scans of my chest, and a camera shoved up the right side of my groin to look at my heart and surroundings blood vessels, doctors discovered that I have a six-inch-long, hair-thin wire embedded in a blood vessel between my heart and one of my lungs. It is either a broken part of a previous PICC line or part of a guide wire for the installment of a PICC line.

Doctors thought it best to leave it there because it is not moving, it is covered over, it is not the cause of my recurring infections, AND because they would have to cut me open again to get it out.

There was mention by my podiatrist and my infectious-disease doctors that I may have to take oral antibiotics pills every day forever to prevent infection recurrences.

I already had four surgeries on my left foot due to infections: three to remove decayed bone and bone fragments, and one to remove a benign tumor that was growing within a diabetic ulcer. I also had severe nasal-sinus surgery several years ago.

Thank you for your prayers and well-wishes.