Open heart updates (sorry if this is scattered and brief...I'll add color commentary later, I just don't want people wondering or getting antsy...feel free to pass around...if you have any questions, post 'em and I'll try to answer them)

So, my mom went in this morning for open heart surgery. She had to have her valved "tweaked", her aneurysm grafted and the hole in her heart repaired. We had to be at Cleveland Clinic at 5:15 this morning. We left her at 8am and the desk attendant told us that she would be in prep for at least 2 hours. They gave us a pager and told us that we would get a page when she went on "bypass", which basically means life support but they don't want to scare you. Well we got that text at 10:24. Then we were put in this ICU class and told what to expect when we got to see Mom in ICU. At 11:24 the surgeon called Dad out of the class and said that surgery had gone well, but that the hole in the heart was pretty sizeable, but fixed. This led us to believe that it was larger than he had originally anticipated. We were told that we couldn't see her for 3-4 hours. In hindsight, the whole surgery anxiety was much less than I had anticipated. I feel this was due to the excellent information we got from the staff here at the clinic. They kept us well informed of what to expect and they made sure we didn't have a whole ton of time once we knew she was in surgery to sit around and wait for news.

So since we had 3-4 hours to kill we had lunch with Carolynn at possibly the most skankiest restaurant I have ever been to in my life. It was a Pizza Hut, but I'm pretty sure it was a front for a drug ring. Oh yeah and it was in the ghetto. Oh yeah and we were the only crackers around. Our check arrived before our food and we had no napkins or silverware...we barely got plates. All I could think was that all my immunizations including my hepatitis were up to date...so I should be ok. It added to the whole experience.

At 3:30ish we arrived at ICU. I'm not going to lie, walking over to ICU was one of the most nerve wracking things I have done in my life. I kept trying to breathe deep but I was in a full body cold sweat. I knew mostly what I would see, but I wasn't sure I was ready to see it. When we arrived she wasn't quite ready to be seen yet, so we had to wait. While we were waiting there was this woman who was waiting wearing a shirt that said, "All stressed out and no one to choke." As we were talking to her we realized she is going on week 14 in ICU. Week 14? In ICU?! I couldn't imagine how difficult that would be. And we thought we had it bad! Around 4 we finally got to see her and she looked as good as one could in ICU. She still had the ventilator in and in true "her" fashion she tried to lift her hand to remove it while we were there. The nurse said that she was doing well and that she should have the ventilator out by this evening and that she should be moved out of ICU by tomorrow morning if things continue the way they are. The only thing they are really concerned about right now is that her blood pressure is running on the low side, which is normal for her (but not what they want to see.) After 20 minutes we were kicked out of ICU. When I say kicked out, I mean the head nurse came around and said, "How long have you been here? Too long. Out." I guess they try to keep the first visit short because the patient needs rest and they still have a lot of stuff to do.

We had a couple more hours to kill, so we came back to the hotel. Dad crashed and I caught up on some emails and phone calls. Then it was dinner time and back to ICU.

This time the ventilator was out...which was definitely a good thing. Mom was talking but she sounds pretty hoarse. She was complaining of pain from the tubes in her...but this is all very normal. She finally got to eat some ice chips, but then was nauseous, so I guess they try again later. They are still monitoring her blood pressure which continues to be low. The nurse that is staying with her tonight said that if she gets the blood pressure up, she leaves ICU tomorrow earlier in the day. If she doesn't get the blood pressure up, she'll have to stay there for awhile longer. She seemed very tired, which is to be expected so we left early.

I plan on continuing to update this post, hopefully twice a day...but we'll see how that goes. The only place that I can get internet is the lobby of the hotel...so updates maybe less frequent than I would like. But for now, I'm going to go upstairs and crash.