Here is the skinny on my latest surgery.



First off regardless of the rumors you might have heard I did survive my latest surgery to enhance the blood flow through my corotid arteries. As you may know from reading my web page and my blog The Great North Woods of NH I have had a number of procedures on the arteries in my neck over the last three years including a corotid artery bypass a little over a year ago. The bypass was to be the last I would need for a long time, they say the bypass does not block. The best laid plans of mice, men and doctors. It seems the end of the artificial vain they put in is blocking with scar tissue so the idea is to put a stent at the end of the vain and force it open. They also put in a filter to catch any plaque that might break off and try to make it to the brain. Lets hope that it works. Now let me tell you how the surgery went. To start with the first thing they tell me is they will be cutting into both sides of my groin instead of the usual one side. The filter was put in through the artery on one side while the stent was put in from the artery on the other side. The surgery was unremarkable except to say that it took just over two and one half hours and you are not sedated, it is all done with a local anesthetic. It is close to painless but can be very uncomfortable after such a long time. Now on to the recovery room where I normally excel. I have been blessed with the ability to recover quickly from most any surgery. Things were going well except for some minor bleeding from one artery. The only way to solve that is for one of the assistances to keep pressure on the wound till the bleeding stops, no big deal, been there done that before. It was about fifteen minutes into this that things went south, way south! I started to get weak and sick, just about the time I told the assistant something was wrong the alarm went off on my monitor. I could see the monitor out of the corner of my eye and saw that my blood pressure was plummeting like a shooting star crashing to the earth. Not looking good for this curmudgeon. The alarm seems to bring people from everywhere at least six doctors and nurses were standing around my bed and they started to give me some kind of drug to elevate my blood pressure close to normal. This did not seems to work at first but soon my pressure was hovering around 100 and I was feeling pretty good. At this time everyone left my bedside and the privacy curtains were pulled tightly closed, so their I lay all by myself. As I lay there contemplating what I had just been through Nurse Evil came crashing through my privacy curtains swing a length of garden hose like Annie Oakley swinging a lasso. It seems my team thought that a full bladder could be the cause of my crashing blood pressure. Now I am not going to tell you where Nurse Evil planed to insert that length of garden hose to drain the bladder but I think you can figure it out. This procedure took about twenty seven and one half minutes to complete. I will take some of the blame for the long time it took. Nurse Evil had a hard time reaching up to the ceiling light which is where I was hanging from as I tried to claw my way through the ceiling to get further away from Nurse Evil. Now with the evil deed done and behind me I can say it's possible that I exaggerated the time that this took to complete by about twenty five minutes, but it seemed like it took a very long time to me. The one I refer to as Nurse Evil was in fact a very nice nurse doing a nasty job as quickly as she could so they could try to wean me off the drug they had me on to keep my pressure stable. I was told this drug I was on could only be given through an IV for a short time. Some thing to do with it damaging the skin and vain when it is given that way any length of time. Now with the garden hose in place and the bladder drained it was time for the big test. Time to wean me off the drug and for the heart to take over it's job without any help. And walla! They reduce the dose of the drug and my blood pressure drops like a lead balloon. New plan, I need to be moved to the intensive care unit. Once I am there they put an IV in my neck beside the collar bone, they tell me that they will run a very small, short catheter through the vain down near or into the heart. That is the only safe way to deliver this drug that I am on for a longer period of time. Fear not! For this ten or fifteen second procedure I am well sedated. But for the garden hose treatment, not. For that I was told to take a deep breath. Deep breath my ass, which by the way was not were she inserted the garden hose if that was what you were thinking earlier. The nurses in ICU tell me they are almost sure that I am suffering from dehydration but still many different test are ordered. Both for the heart ,corotid arteries and the new stent and filter in them. Blood was taken about every four hours and sent to the lab for testing. By nine oclock that night I was weaned off the drug and my blood pressure was it same old self, higher then they like it but that has been the case for the last three years. To make what is becoming a long story shorter the next afternoon my team told me that all my tests were great and I was good to go home. With a request that I not go home alone but go and stay with family for a few days. I am still not sure what happened in the recovery room but I was so glad to get out of that ICU bed and be able to walk around I asked no questions. I will discuss it with my teams lead doctor Dr Powell when I go for my follow up visit at the end of the month.

And that is the way it was on this day, July 26 2007, for the happy to be alive curmudgeon, "the Layz1."