After the Surgery......

This past Monday Morning i  had my Cardiac Catheter. I came out a lot better than the last time this procedure was done on me. I'm not too sure why i fended better this time around than i did back in July of '04. Maybe because my hips are wider, or maybe just because UCD is such a better Hospital than Kaiser. However; when i was done for Kaiser back in '04 it was performed at UCSF, so i don't really know why i felt so much better and mobile this time around.


Anyways though, come to find out i did not need to have the Stent placed in my Aorta. Also, a weird piece of information that we found out from this surgery was that my Aorta has this weird 'S' shape after my Co-arctation repair site. That is why all of the Echo's taken at the doctors office made it look like my Aorta was collapsing, the bend in the 'S' gave the appearance of the Aortic walls giving way. How trippy is that? And more importantly, How in the world is that not in my charts?! You would think that Kaiser and UCSF would have put that into my file the last time this surgery was done to me, you know; as an FYI or something! But hell, what can you really expect from Kaiser;right?


The surgery wasn't a total waste though. They took a lot of different pictures of my entire Heart Muscle and of my Aorta for Dr.Park to over look. We are planning on most likely having to get a Pacemaker placed in my heart, it might happen as early as this summer; but we don't know quite yet. When i was hooked up to the machines in the Hospital before,during and after the surgery; we noticed that my Blood Pressure is fairly low as well as my pulse. We also realized that when i sleep my BP and my Pulse drop dangerously low. I'm saying a pulse of about 30ish. Definitely NOT good. If i was to get a Pacemaker put in, that would be able to regulate my pulse and my BP much better and not let it drop down as low as it does throughout the day and night.

So that's how the surgery went, and what is the initial cardiac plan for now. It doesn't scare me or freak me out that i am going to be getting a Pacemaker. It was inevitable that i was going to be getting one, Yes; we thought that it wasn't going to be until i was 40ish (initially) but my pregnancies with Skylair and Isabella have thrown my system out of whack. Damn Children. If this isn't proof or reason enough to get 'Fixed' and have the BLT (Bi-Lateral Tubal Ligation) done, i don't know what it. Hopefully i can have that surgery done before the end of the year. But that's still up in the air because i know for a fact that my OB will not do that 'elective' procedure until all of this cardiac stuff is figured out.

Other than that i'm doing alright. My left hip/groin is still a tad sore, as is my chest muscles because of the breathing tube they gave me during the operation made me cough and cough when i woke up. Which is super Sucky! I finally got rid of my cold last weekend and i got a breathing tube during the surgery so now i'm coughing up a storm still now and have uber sore muscles. Gah. I'll be alright though. :D

Also, Isabella did super well with me being in the hospital and not being able to Nurse her at all on Monday or Tuesday. I felt really bad for her though on Monday night because i had to walk around with her until she fell asleep and she's so conditioned to nurse so was upset and it took a while for her to fall asleep. However, she slept really well. She got up once like an hr after she went down because of the neighbors and that was the hard one in getting her back down, but after that she stayed down for about 4 hrs or so and then she got up again; but i was able to get her down within 10 minutes ( YAY ME!!) and stay down for another  few hours. So all in all she did AWESOME. She just missed mommy and our routine. I am back to nursing now and we're back to our regular schedual. I just couldn't do it for those 2 days because of the medicine i was given in the hospital. So yes we are still EBF, but i guess i don't have too much milk left, she must not be drinking as much as i thought. I didn't get engorged until last yesterday afternoon, and even then it was barely what you can call engorgement.