First posting since the Hospital...

Doug and I at the hospital (probably the third day). One night I heard a very interesting conversation with all the nurses out at the nursing station about the fact that Doug always came in a white shirt and tie. One of the nurses must have been either a member or knew someone who was one, because she was trying to answere their questions. I wish that they would have asked us, but they were much too scared!!!


When we came home from the hospital, we found our door had been "heart attacked" by the young sisters. It was really cute. I love them all!


This really isn't supposed to be a "sexy" picture (as if) but I thought that you might be amazed at the tiny incision they made to get to my heart. My surgeon did "micro surgery". Pretty amazing. I can't believe that something that small can hurt as much as it has!!!


My get well letters from Olivia and Victoria. Olivia's drew a picture of grandpa with a very sad face, me on a heart shaped surgical table, and wrote 'I wish I was tere!'. The pictures were great.


I am always asking Andrea how big Jett is... She and the girls traced him onto this paper and folded it up and sent it to me under the title of "Flat Jett". (Relating to the book Flat Stanley.) I couldn't believe how big he is. I think it is a good thing that they couldn't get cheap tickets here this month... I wouldn't have been able to even hold him or the girls and that would have been awful.


The day I got home I received a package from Jeff and Laura. A couple of books, some puzzle books, and some of my DVD's from home to watch while I am down! What a great package!

Hello family,
This is my first attempt to type since my surgery. It is going very slowly and it will most likely take me a couple of days. I have always been awful at spelling, but with my "brain on drugs" I can hardly keep my sentences straight, let alone spelling.

I am now an official "person of color"… I have areas of my skin that go from white to yellow, yellow to green, green to blue, blue to red, red to purple, and purple to black! And that is just on my hands and wrists!!! I have "holes" all over my chest from needle prick size to my largest which happens to be my "tiny" 3 inch incision. I didn’t know until I got out of surgery that my doctor is one who does this surgery as a "Micro Surgery". Apparently he does it all with monitors and forceps, etc. Thank heavens I got the small incision! I can’t imagine even worse pain that I have had.

The pain has been much worse since in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I got on a coughing jag that I couldn’t stop and something in the right lower part of my chest just snapped (or popped or something very immediate). For a few seconds I could actually breath better and had less pain… but within 15-30 seconds I knew that this was getting worse in a hurry. I was complaining more about my side than my sternum! I couldn’t stand up straight, breath deeply, turn, or get up or down without excruciating pain. All the rest of the night, Sunday and Monday I was in tears because of how bad the pain was. When I had to get up or down, I couldn’t pluck up the courage to even want to. It’s sure a good thing that I have such a good, sweet nurse who can also be a "Nurse Nazi" when he has to be. He kept me going when I just wanted to give up!

I have a home health nurse that will come 2 times a week for a couple of weeks. She came yesterday and called my surgeon’s office and blabbed that I was having severe pain… they called me and told me to come in this morning for a chest x-ray and to be seen. We did… My chest x-ray was better than before I left the hospital so they knew it wasn’t a leak in my lungs or pneumonia… When they started checking me they came to the conclusion that because of the "stretch" they put on my ribs during surgery, they had probably been "cracked" or slightly separated… my coughing jag just finished them off! Anyway, they just told me to take it a day at a time (I can’t do anything else) and hopefully I will be able to continue to move forward, even if it may be at a slower pace! They also told me to get a "rib brace" to see if that will help me. We got one and it has helped. I try to only use it when I am moving, but I think it will help me get moving more.

Interestingly, today as Doug and I have been talking about what we remember about the early days after surgery… Now that we are putting 2 and 2 together, we realize that I complained about this rib pain from the very beginning. I’ll explain… We have had many tender mercies shown to us during this time. The very first one is this. I knew that Doug was going to be rather "shook up" when he saw me the first time out of surgery. I had been hoping and praying that I would be able to let him know that I was ok and that I knew he was there. My very first memory (even if it is a little fuzzy) was this: I heard Doug’s voice tell me that he was there… I was able to wave my left index finger slightly at him. He saw it and realized that I was waving to him. He took my hand and squeezed it letting me know that he had seen me wave. Then he bent down and kissed my forehead and said that he loved me. I was able to nod my head once so that I was repeating it back to him, too. He recognized that signal too! We hadn’t done any previous planning together, but the Lord gave us the tender mercy of being able to communicate long before I ever woke up!

I remember waking up two times with a breathing tube down my throat and the ventilator on. There was a male nurse stationed at my bedside for the first 24 hours after surgery. Doug was also standing there. I was trying hard to tell them that I was nauseated and had a terrible pain in my right bottom lung (see, I even had it then!!) The nurse couldn’t figure it out so they put me back under so I would quit fighting the breathing tube. Later I woke up trying to tell them the same thing…(it is very hard to talk when there is a pipe down your throat and your lips are taped to it). This time however Doug figured it out… He knew what I was trying to say. The nurse gave me some medicine for nausea and I settled back down. (That was another tender mercy for me… I had been very frightened of throwing up and then sucking it down my lungs. I did ok.)

Although I was awake most of the second day, What I remember of it was that I would be given a pain medicine… throw up…. Given something else…. Throw up, and so on. They couldn’t find anything that I could tolerate. At the very end of the 2nd day we hit upon one that stayed down…. I haven’t let them change the medicine since.

The third day, I was feeling a little better with some pain medicine in me. They got me up to walk a couple of times. Made me get up to the bathroom. Sit in a chair to eat meals… Everything that they needed to do to keep me moving. (As we looked back today, we also realized that they kept telling me to stand up straight and look ahead when I was walking. I couldn’t… my back hurt too bad!!! I guess we are really stupid, but it was like an epiphany to have so many things come together to remind us that my back had been a bother from the get-go!!!)

The forth day they took some wire leads that went directly into my heart out (they had been there in case I needed to be "shocked"). I’m sure glad that they didn’t need them. After they put another line into me, they took the big honking stuff out of my neck! That was nice. (I have to admit though, each time they removed something I was sure praying that they weren’t going to need it 30 minutes down the road!) But the best thing about the 4th day was… I got to take a shower!!! And I needed it! It felt sooooooo good! I had to have help to shower, but it felt like heaven to me! (Maybe even the Celestial Kingdom!!!)

The fifth day I was kind of miserable. My back and right side was hurting so badly that I could hardly breath. I think that everyone thought that I was nuts because that was not where any surgery was done. I spent a miserable day and night, and then it let up and wasn’t quite as bad! (Another light bulb moment for us!) Later they came in to remove my chest tubes. The first one came out just great… no pain… it just slipped out as soon as the sutures were cut. They clipped the sutures of the second drain and gave a little tug… NOTHING. They pulled a little harder….NOTHING! They tried several times and then they all got rather scared that the tube would break and then what would they do. They all decided that they would wait and make Dr. Knight take out the stubborn tube. They didn’t want to be responsible for it breaking!

The sixth day… I didn’t see Dr.Knight until later that morning. He came in and you could tell he was rather concerned. He pulled on the drain… nothing. He pulled from another angle, and another… nothing. He then started pulling it out 1/16 of an inch at a time by stretching the tube tight and then letting it slowly catch up… then pull it again that much and wait. It took him about 2 minutes, but with patience it finally came out with a blast of bloody water that sprayed all the med students across their white coats. You could feel the entire room give a sigh of relief. I told Dr. Knight I was sure glad that he could get it out. He smiled at me and said, "Me too! Otherwise you and I would have been on our way to surgery again this morning!" I became once again thankful for a tender mercy.

During the next 5 hours, I would get word that I would be going home… then that I wouldn’t… then I would… then I wouldn’t. All of a sudden, a nurse came in and said… I am going to help you shower so you can go home nice and clean. I really wasn’t sure that I would be going home, but I was not going to turn down help with a shower. By the time I got out of the shower they had everything in motion to get me out of there. Since I was being checked out as we spoke, I asked the nurse for a pain pill because it was time and because it was an hour drive home. She said No! You will have to get your prescriptions and then take one. Doug went to get my RX’s and our insurance would not let him get them. (He could come back to Palmyra and get them at Rite-Aid, but not at the hospital pharmacy). After about 45 minutes of trying, he came back upstairs and you could see that he was one really chapped person (even in his calm and gentle way, you could have lighted candles from the sparks that were coming from his eyes.) One very astute resident saw him and knew that there was going to be trouble… He asked him what had happened and Doug told him and then said, "Now I am supposed to take my wife on our hour drive home without anything for pain, leave her there alone so I can go to the drug store to get something, and then come back and give her her pain medication that was due an hour ago!" The resident found the nurse that had told us we couldn’t have pain medication, kicked some other butts that we only heard about, and in about 5 minutes I had a pain pill to take! The resident was a doctor that worked with Dr. Knight and I have since come to the conclusion that the hospital does not want to do anything to make Dr. Knight upset! (He is a quiet, soft spoken, young man, but I heard him "ream out" a nurse because someone had used white tape to tape some bandages on me. My skin was blistering and we could not get the tape off… He never let his voice get loud or used any bad language, but that nurse had felt like she had been chewed up and spit out.) I don’t think that there will be any adhesive tape on the thoracic surgery floor ever again!!! Yikes! So you can say that another tender mercy occurred… I was going home, "high on drugs!" The very best way to go!!!

When we got to out apartment, we came in from the garage to find that our door had been "heart attacked!" The "little sisters" (young sisters) had all made hearts that had sayings, pictures, etc., on them and had pasted them all over our front door. It was so cute and it really does make you laugh when you see it. I am sure that it is a blog picture for sure! You know the rest of what happened because I have already told you. There are lots of other things that happened, but these are the ones that I can remember right now.

It is going to take a while, but I am sure that I will be feeling ok soon. Thank you for your prayers. I could really feel them. We appreciate each one of them. Thanks for your love… we could feel that, too!

May 22 I had to go to the Doctor today... I guess they are pleased with my healing process even if I feel like I am hardly improving. As I look back I can tell that I am, but sometimes it is hard to see any change day to day. Doug is a saint! He is a wonderful nurse and even a better husband! I am pretty sore today... not sure why. Maybe because I didn't really rest yesterday. I will have to be better!

Thank you for all you do and have done for us. We love you all! Doug and Delores