The swing doors to surgery swung open to admit me into a large room fitted with looming and fierce equipment. I was shifted from my gurney to the operation table rather like a big piece of meat served up for Thanksgiving dinner.
A surrounding team of masked staff dressed in scrubs looked down at me. I smiled weakly. “How is everyone?” I asked, a silly thing to say but I could think of nothing else.
There was friendly banter to make me feel at ease. Someone guessed by my speech I was not a native. I felt a new prick in my arm perhaps for anesthesia. There was no escape now.
A tent like thing was placed over my head which promptly collapsed on my face, “I can’t breathe!” I gasped and a hand was inserted inside the canvas to readjust the tent.
“If you don’t mind we are strapping down your arms,” a voice said. I wondered what they would do if I said I did mind? But, of course, they couldn’t have flailing arms getting in the way of surgery.
I began to feel drowsy from anesthesia coursing through my veins. Perhaps I should just go to sleep. But hey! Was that a knife slicing into my chest? “I feel that!” I cried. I heard the doctor order more anesthesia and soon I felt nothing other than pressure on my chest.
A pacemaker is a small battery unit the size of a watch with wires that connect to the heart. If the heart stops beating, the pacemaker gives it a nudge. Fortunately, one does not feel such nudges. My pacemaker was set at 60 beats a minute and if my heart feels a little lazy, my pacemaker will step in.
I was wheeled back to my room. I looked at the clock. About an hour and a half had passed. The worst was over. And it wasn’t bad at all.
I was surrounded with nurses and aides as they worked to see that I was settled comfortably and all my signs from various machines were good. I soon realized I was starved.
No wonder. Dr. Cubbage had called me at breakfast almost 12 hours ago. Chip had missed lunch and dinner too. Dinner hour had passed but I asked the nurse if it was too late to get something to eat.
Soon two box lunches containing turkey sandwiches, salt free chips, fruit and cookies arrived. The food was the best I had ever eaten.
It was late and Chip left for Urbanna. As he was leaving a friend from church was downstairs in the lobby checking into the hospital after a fall. The hospital never closes to emergencies.
No one enjoys the first night after surgery but caring nurses attended to me all night long. They appeared to me more like angels fluttering around my bed helping me stay as comfortable as possible.
One night nurse was ever so sweet, I wish I had learned her name. She was, I think, Filipino and she called me “Mama” every time she came in to check on me. Her tender loving care brought tears to my eyes.
The next morning nurse Amanda Creekmore arrived for the day shift and took over my care. I immediately told her what every patient must say….“I am going home today.”
But I had to wait for my surgeon to release me. He had called for a CT scan of my heart to make sure the pacemaker was just right and to satisfy him that the mass he spotted the day before from the sonar image was calcium. They compared my new CT scan to an earlier CT scan taken in 2018 and discovered there had been no change, a good sign.
A PT therapist and a cardiologist came by to speak to me. I was given some exercises to help my left arm recover. After a tasty lunch, Dr. Ziki came to see me and said I could go home.
Amanda came in to read over the post-surgery advice and help me pack my bag. We laughed when we discovered I could not move my slinged arm in order to wear the dress I had arrived in so I had to make my exit in my robe. I tried to appear as if wearing a robe as one passed through the lobby was perfectly normal. It would be a month before I would have much movement in my arm.
Off we went back to Urbanna. I was soon hugging my dog, “Dandy,” with one arm and propped up in bed remembering the amazing last 36 hours.
Everyone at Riverside cardiology was super. I was well cared for and more than that I actually felt loved and even cherished. They do a marvelous job.
My thanks to the entire Riverside team starting with Amanda, Vickie, Lanette and Dr. Keith Cubbage at White Stone Family Practice who first spotted my problem. I owe them my life.
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