Going Home Tomorrow (Sunday)

The cardiac doctor with the turban and beard said that I was good to go home on Sunday.

His assistant who came to check my incision (nice job with no ragged edges - Thank You! Dr. Pfeffer!) told me that I would be discharged about 1:00PM after all the paperwork, instructions, and medications are done.

I was told by one of the nurses that the two wires connecting my heart to a temporary pacemaker would be removed on tne day I go home. ("Hold your breath!" and YANK! as there's only a couple of stitches used.)

They try not to keep their patients too many days because they don't want the patient to get sick in the hospital.

They say that I did good.

Tuesday: Got the aortic valve removed and replaced, and two(?) bypass grafts. Went to sleep 7AM and was remember being awake at 7PM, although I'm told that I was in and out earlier Tuesday.

Wedneday: breathing tube removed and able to "talk". Able to "sit" uprightin a chair for total of seven hours (four hours in intensive care, three in intermediate care after chest tubed were taken out - "Hold your breath" YANK!). Moved from 3rd floor intensive care unit room (no bathroom with toilet) to 5th floor intermediate care unit room (got a bathriim with shower and toilet.)

Thursday: Walked up and down the hallway three times; passed on walking Wednesday as I had already seven hours of "sitting".

Friday: Big day for visitors - Bill, Gordon, Donna, Rick, Mom, Lily, Diana, Elizabeth,And Virginia. Smerke called on the phone.

There's cable television that we don't have at home.. Watched the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, AMC, CNN, and the Kaiser educational video on coumadin (polite word for warfarin which is known as a rat poison.) which I will now be taking to prevent blood clots.

Movies and programs included bits and pieces of Alien 2 and Alien 3, The Fugitive, Terminator 2 (I nap in between the bits and pieces that I watch.)

What was really good was "The Night of the Living Dead" where the live people did not refer to the living dead as "Zombies," The final resolution of the zombie problem was the phone call to the U.S. Army phone number stencilled on the storage container containing the original living dead (Secret Project of the U.S. Army) that was mis-delivered to a body parts shop in Louisville, Kentucky.

The U.S. Army simply launched a low-yield tactical nuclear shell that resulted in 4,000 killls over a twenty-square mile area.

Clean and efficient!

Sent from my Peek