One Amazing Month.....
I've just returned from my now daily 1.5 mile walk around the small lake a block or so from our house. Today's walk was filled with gratitude for I was thinking that precisely one month ago at that exact time I was waking up at Midland Memorial Hospital with 4 "locks" in my arms discharging intravenous fluids into my body. I had a trach tube stuck down my throat to aid my recently collapsed lungs in pumping oxygen and I had 3 large tubes protruding out of my thorax draining large amounts of fluids from my lungs and surrounding environs. Not to mention that my rib cage had been cracked and my chest had been cut completely open exposing my heart which had been stopped to perform the by-passes. And this was just my upper body.
Down below, on my left leg, I had five sutured wounds where a foot or more of veins had been removed to be used on my heart I remember waking up in no small amount of pain and discomfort primarily due to the way my back and shoulders had been stretched for hours while I was on the operating table. Then I was told to try and not move for the next two days. The discomfort of all that was something I can't describe but the reason for the operation as outlined by my cardiac team was that the blockages I had and especially the blood clot in my cardiac artery could be fatal.
So as I walked around the lake today in the bright warm sunshine and admired the rafts of wild ducks as they winter over in West Texas, I could not have had more gratitude for the outcome of my ordeal and especially for all those who made it bearable. And as I walked at a goodly pace just 30 days after this operation I still am amazed, truly astounded, by the miracles of modern medicine.
I've just returned from my now daily 1.5 mile walk around the small lake a block or so from our house. Today's walk was filled with gratitude for I was thinking that precisely one month ago at that exact time I was waking up at Midland Memorial Hospital with 4 "locks" in my arms discharging intravenous fluids into my body. I had a trach tube stuck down my throat to aid my recently collapsed lungs in pumping oxygen and I had 3 large tubes protruding out of my thorax draining large amounts of fluids from my lungs and surrounding environs. Not to mention that my rib cage had been cracked and my chest had been cut completely open exposing my heart which had been stopped to perform the by-passes. And this was just my upper body.
Down below, on my left leg, I had five sutured wounds where a foot or more of veins had been removed to be used on my heart I remember waking up in no small amount of pain and discomfort primarily due to the way my back and shoulders had been stretched for hours while I was on the operating table. Then I was told to try and not move for the next two days. The discomfort of all that was something I can't describe but the reason for the operation as outlined by my cardiac team was that the blockages I had and especially the blood clot in my cardiac artery could be fatal.
So as I walked around the lake today in the bright warm sunshine and admired the rafts of wild ducks as they winter over in West Texas, I could not have had more gratitude for the outcome of my ordeal and especially for all those who made it bearable. And as I walked at a goodly pace just 30 days after this operation I still am amazed, truly astounded, by the miracles of modern medicine.
