Home now

I just got dropped off by Taxi at home following my recovery period at St. Francis Medical Center for Open Heart Surgery.

I feel pretty good. Most of the chest pain has subsided. I can get up and get around fine.

They had me get up and walk 4 times a day doing laps around the ward which was intended to help my heart to heal. I normally work about two miles a day, so this was no real problem.

They had been on blood pressure medicine (I saw my pressure drop down to 98/58 at one point), cholesterol medicine, gaut medicine (which I’m most thankful for) and Tylenol as needed. I wasn’t on Norco hardly at all.

Now, I’m home and I hope to get some rest. They had me up at 4am for the first walk. The chest incision made it next to impossible to get relaxed in bed so I hardly slept at night. After the first walk, they would sit me in a chair with a blood pressure cuff puffing every 10 minutes, and a blood sugar test (yes, the finger-poking kind) every hour since they also had be on an insulin IV drip, and full EKG rig on my chest, and two drainage tubes from my chest.

Now, all that is removed.

My meds are at the pharmacy which I can’t get to right now since my car is still parked back at Harbor UCLA. I can try and get them sent to me tomorrow and try and get down to retrieve the car.

They want me to clean and replace the dressing on my incising wound once a day — so I’ll do that in the bathroom so that cat doesn’t pounce my chest in the middle of it. I’ve got new diet rules and all kinds of stuff to go over.

But for right now… I just wanna rest.Thanks for all your support.

[8:58 pm]

My main laptop suddenly won’t power up which is a real bummer. I have a lot of excluves original music and vocal covers on the hard drive, including the music and lyrics to a song responding to Jason Aldean’s “Try that in a Small Town.” I didn’t do anything unique to it, it was working at the hospital.

[1:25 pm Mon]

So last night was a thing. I kept having dream sequences about getting in the perfect position to have the smoothest possible inhale/exhale cycle of breath. Comfortably breathing was a challenge, so this wasn’t a surprise but actually dreaming about it repeatedly, and dreaming that I could ‘lock it in” to have a repeated constant cycle was a little unique.

Most of the phlegm in my chest has been coughed out but I do get into coughing jacks trying to squeeze out the rest.

Anyway, this morning I had things to do. I took my time getting up and walking about, making sure I was fully awake before setting things in motion. First, I used Uber to call a car to take me back down to Harbor UCLA to retrieve our main vehicle. Yes, yes, I know. I’ve heard that I shouldn't drive yet — but I felt how it was to ride in the taxi home, and I could tell I was pretty comfortable in the Uber to Harbor.

The parking situation down there is even worse than I remembered. The cars were stacked three deep with valets in place to move things around if you get stuck behind other vehicles, which my car was — stuck behind two SUVs. I told the attendant where my car was, and he got the SUVs out of the way. I turned the key and — like I’d feared — the battery petered out on me. This has been a problem for months particularly if I leave the car for more than a week without driving. But I tried again and it turned over.

Driving was no problem, the biggest issue was with my left elbow because I’d slept last night with it jammed into the chair, it was pretty painful to move so my left arm was mostly useless. The seat in the Mustang was even more comfortable than my chair at home, so other than the elbow it was pretty easy.

I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up my meds, and inquire about Robins, then a final stop at the Liquor store for some Lemon Ice Tea and a can of Mike’s Hard Lemonade/Strawberry for emergency anesthesia. Just in case I needed it.

Back home again now. If I’d been still at the hospital they would have had been walking around the ward 3 times by now — so the effort was about even with that. Now I can rest again.

[2:25 pm]

Ok, so somebody has taped a bunch of paperwork to our front door- which has a window. I think I know what it is, but I’m taking a nap before I get up and deal with it

[3:45 pm]

The paperwork is notice of a Trustee Sale of our house by the Reverse Mortgage Co. Yes, we were expecting this since my mom died last December.. I called my Probate Attorney, who we’ve been working with for months and he said to scan/email, Fed-ex or Fax him a copy right away. We had the probate hearing on July 20th and everything went well, so we should be able to get the Judge to halt the sale until probate is complete in several more months.

Just another thing to deal with.

[122 p.m. Tuesday]

We received paperwork taped to our front door last night from the reverse mortgage company. I called my probate attorney and he needs a copy of it faxed to him. I also realized last night that the pain in my elbow was really gout, so I need to get my gout medicine from the pharmacy. I called my cousin Mitch, and he's arranging to pick up the medicine and to get the paperwork faxed. Hopefully, this solves all the outstanding issues.