Day Three. Thursday.

It's Thursday and I walked around the entire floor with the physical therapists, and also had my echocardiogram done.  My ejection fraction has improved to 55!  Woohoo!  That is the low end of the normal range - so this is a big success.

Two doctors came in to give me the news and they were giddy. My nurse was in the room at the time and told me that it was amazing to have such an improvement -- and that being proactive in having this surgery was likely why I was able to improve it so well. 

They were supposed to move me off of Cardiac ICU and into a regular room yesterday, but there were no rooms available, so I stayed in ICU longer. They told me I may go home as early as tomorrow, but physical therapy needs to have me come walk some stairs. 

When I told my surgeon I had 7 stairs to get into my house and 16 stairs to get up and down to my bedroom he said "Good! I want you up and walking and doing stairs!"

I am tired and sleeping a lot, but I do feel 'better' and stronger than I did yesterday. There is always activity going on. They come in daily to take a chest x-ray to look at the sternum and make sure it is still good and so far everything has been great. 

I still had mad nightmares last night, and they are giving me the oxycodone 5 every few hours. I am not a fan.

I get a lot of compliments on how well I am doing, and how great I am recovering.

If I can be honest -- I think it is just my attitude that they are responding to.  I am trying to be positive and focus on doing what I need to do to get stronger.  I thank God that I am under such good care, and that I am healing and doing well. 

A word about infiltration.

When an IV is in your arm, in this case giving me iron in the photo shown here, there are sometimes problems with something called infiltration. I had to get more iron because I have anemia, so this may not be an issue for others. But the nurses told me iron often causes infiltration because it is thicker or more viscous. At any rate, infiltration causes the liquid to infiltrate the tissue surrounding the IV site and make it swell up.  Which happened to me and it hurts.  When it happens you also cannot bend or use your wrist very well for about 4-5 days after this happens.

It wasn't the worst thing ever, but it was a pain in the butt.  Because of my anemia issues, and the doctor's desire to get my hemoglobin up higher, I was staying the hospital a day longer than I probably would have otherwise. 

They finally got a bed for me in the regular area and I left the ICU Thursday early evening to my new bed and room.