Surgery and Beyond

Tomorrow is the big day. I am ready for the surgery to be behind me and the recovery journey to begin. The whole process of mentally preparing for a major surgery has been sort of surreal. Especially, the decisions of where to have my surgery and which surgeon to choose. Matt and I met with one surgeon and immediately felt we were in the right place. We have done some backtracking, after the fact, going over why this was our immediate feeling and really making sure we are 100% comfortable with our  decision.

First we felt it was best to be in Buffalo and not have to travel to receive care if at all possible. The hospital (Buffalo Mercy) is ranked in the top 5% of cardiac programs in the nation. The cardiac ICU and the surgical team have won many awards for their care over the past few years under the direction my surgeon. My surgeon, Dr. John Bell-Thomson, is a very good combination of lots of experience (43 years in surgical practice) along with keeping up with current medical techniques. In the video below the American Heart Association recognizes him for his work with minimally invasive robotic surgery (unfortunately my surgery is not eligible for minimally invasive techniques).

I realized I have shared a lot of medical information (Background) and some of the mental processing I've gone through (Thankful) but I sort of left out the surgery day details and preliminary recovery information.My surgery is scheduled for 7:30 AM tomorrow. It should take between 3 and 4 hours. The nurse practitioner I met with last week told Matt not to expect to hear anything before noon (and that is if my surgery starts on time).  I will be moved from the OR to directly to the cardiac ICU where they will wake me up. I will be in the ICU for the first day or two and then will be moved the the cardiac floor. I will be in the hospital for 4-7 days if everything goes as planned. After I am out of the hospital I am very limited in my upper body movements for the first 2-3 months while my sternum heals. This will probably be the toughest part because I won't be able to pick Aiden up during that time.

For local people I should be able to have non-family visitors once I am moved out of the ICU and into the cardiac floor.

Brin is going to be posting updates tomorrow and the first few days until I feel comfortable taking the posts back over. Thank you all for your support and encouragement so far! This is definitely the beginning of a long journey but I'm up for the challenge.


P.S. If you are wondering what you do the day before open heart surgery here's be run down:

• Do all the cleaning you've put off until this point (Really do a little cleaning and let Mom do a major clean- THANKS MOM).
• Make a cake. Seriously, a really yummy Pinterest recipe for a strawberry cake (that tastes exactly like strawberry shortcake) with cream cheese frosting. I added the stitched heart decorations for good measure. :)

• Go to dinner with your family and find cool shirts!

• Cuddle your very wiggly, not very into cuddling two year old and husband.