I have been working on getting everything in order for my upcoming hip replacement surgery. Some of that effort includes completing all my PM's (preventive maintenance) for work before I am out so that my co-workers aren't stuck doing it. I am also getting my house ready . . . I bought myself a recliner which is uber comfortable and got an "Assist Tray" which connects under the edge of the recliner and has a handle to hold on to when standing up, as well as a lap tray that rotates 360 degrees. So the living room is ready for me to be gimping around.
I got my new crutches a couple of weeks ago and they are super cool and will be super comfy if I need to be on them long term. After seeing these marvelous inventions I can't imagine ever trying to use a standard style of crutch again. I discovered them online when researching crutches, yes it is an odd thing to research, however I was hearing stories about people having to be on crutches for months at a time and I knew that with my torn rotator cuff and bone spur in my shoulder I would NOT be able to manage traditional crutches. Here is a link to the crutches.
http://www.mobilegs.com/index.cfm
I rearranged my bedroom so that getting in and out of bed after surgery should be fairly easy. I also installed a couple of safety bars in the bathroom, one on the side of the tub and the other on the wall. I have added a shower chair, hand held shower and non skid mat to the tub. So safety is taken care of now one more step in the process.
I went on Thursday 11/8/12 to Carepoint East for my pre-Admission testing. In my discussions about past medical history I told the PA that I had Pericarditis when I was 12. The physician who came in to check me out was concerned and wanted to know when my last Echocardiogram was, I thought it was at the very least 10 years prior and once the doc left the room I placed a call to my Cardiologist and confirmed that yep it was exactly ten years earlier. She sent me out to the hospital to get an Echo and chest xray.
I of course can not do any thing NORMAL and had some problems during the Echo exam. To do an Echo the patient is positioned on the left side, this places the heart closest to the chest wall and provides the technician and physician with the best possible pictures of the heart. Unfortunately my left hip is the one I am having replaced so I had to lay on that hip the entire time. Needless to say it was extremely painful and I laid there crying the whole time. The technician asked me to stick around after my chest xray because there was something in the exam that had concerned her and she wanted to show it to a cardiologist immediately.
So I went out and had the xray and was returning to the waiting room when the echo tech found me in the hall and asked me to come back to her exam room. She asked me to sit down and the proceeded to tell me that during my Echo exam my heart rate had dropped into the 30's on three separate occasions and I also had some heart wall problem. The cardiologist wanted me to go immediately to the Emergency Department and sign in because he felt that I had, had or was having a heart attack.
Of course this information was NOT what I was expecting to hear and I was completely shocked. Tammy the Echo tech walked with me to the ED and waited while they signed me in and took me into triage. She kept saying she had never had this happen before and she was as surprised as I was over the results of my echo.
I had a EKG done in triage and was taken to a room in the ED where I was installed in one of the lovely hospital gowns and nurses and doc's began coming and going. My veins do not cooperate with needle sticks and they had a heck of a time drawing blood for tests. They had a little trouble getting my IV port installed but that at least worked. What little blood the did draw ended up clotting and they had to re-stick me for new samples.
I spent about two hours in the ED getting checked out and then was informed that I was going to be admitted for observation. I was transferred to East Tower 6 around 5PM. I had contacted my mother and my boys and they all drove up to Columbus to see me and make sure I was still alive! They arrived just as I was being rolled down the hallway to go to the unit. I think they were relieved to see I was ok and they stayed until 8PM. Then made the drive back to Dayton.
The night was uneventful and I slept fairly well in the hospital bed, which could actually be positioned to make my hip hurt less (such a lovely thing). And all the rooms at The Wexner Medical Center at the Ohio State University East Campus are private and cozy. The building itself is showing its age but I got WONDERFUL care and I would much rather have good care than be in a facility that looks pristine! Every person I encountered there was friendly and concerned about what was happening. I am very pleased with how attentive the cardiac team was to me and how quickly they assessed the situation and made recommendations.
I was laying in bed dozing on Friday and the nurse came in and asked me how I was feeling, had I been laying there for a while or had I been up. I answered that I had been dozing off and asked why and she told me that my heart rate had dropped again. This time it had dropped to 39 and she called the cardiology team back to the floor. Less than 5 minutes later the Medical student came back in and asked what I had been doing and told me that my rate had dropped again. One of the thoughts when going home was to run a holter monitor for a month. Nothing ever came of that idea though and I was discharged a couple of hours later with no holter monitor.
The PCA Alice walked with me to the door of the hospital (no wheelchair apparently they don't do that any more). I ended up running down to the pharmacy and getting my prescription filled and over to medical records to fill out a form to get copies of my records.
The drive back to Dayton was a bit nerve wracking. . . I stopped a couple of times just to take a break from the stress and still I was exhausted by the time I got home. On the drive I called and scheduled an appointment with my cardiologist Dr. Tim Markus for Thursday and an appointment with my dentist for Tuesday. It turns out I need to get Dental clearance as well before having a hip replacement. Luckily they had an opening this week so I am going to get it all taken care of although I forgot to ask about antibiotics for dental cleanings so I will need to call on Monday.
My job requires that I keep loaner bedside patient monitors on hand so I decided that if I could get some electrodes I would hook myself up over night to verify that my heart was not dropping for no reason. I could not find any electrodes so tried to tape the leads to my body. Unfortunately that did not work. My physician left me some of the kind they use in his office in an envelope on the door, but they are not the right kind either. I was able to use the gel as my conductor with the leads and tape to get a decent signal for a little while. My mom checked with people from her church choir, which is filled with hospital workers, but ended up calling the ED at the local hospital and asking if she could get some electrodes. They gave her a few and I was able to have the bedside monitor on all night watching what my heart was doing. I was also checking my blood pressure every few hours. It had gotten really high in the ED on Thursday (187/109) so I was very worried. My overnight results remained good though my lowest HR was 63 and my BP was in a reasonable range. No strange low drops which was great news.
Here is a picture of the monitor in use... my Iphone 4 takes awful pictures!!!
So I am back on the monitor for the night and will keep monitoring the situation until I get clearance from my doc!
Peace out
I got my new crutches a couple of weeks ago and they are super cool and will be super comfy if I need to be on them long term. After seeing these marvelous inventions I can't imagine ever trying to use a standard style of crutch again. I discovered them online when researching crutches, yes it is an odd thing to research, however I was hearing stories about people having to be on crutches for months at a time and I knew that with my torn rotator cuff and bone spur in my shoulder I would NOT be able to manage traditional crutches. Here is a link to the crutches.
http://www.mobilegs.com/index.cfm
I rearranged my bedroom so that getting in and out of bed after surgery should be fairly easy. I also installed a couple of safety bars in the bathroom, one on the side of the tub and the other on the wall. I have added a shower chair, hand held shower and non skid mat to the tub. So safety is taken care of now one more step in the process.
I went on Thursday 11/8/12 to Carepoint East for my pre-Admission testing. In my discussions about past medical history I told the PA that I had Pericarditis when I was 12. The physician who came in to check me out was concerned and wanted to know when my last Echocardiogram was, I thought it was at the very least 10 years prior and once the doc left the room I placed a call to my Cardiologist and confirmed that yep it was exactly ten years earlier. She sent me out to the hospital to get an Echo and chest xray.
I of course can not do any thing NORMAL and had some problems during the Echo exam. To do an Echo the patient is positioned on the left side, this places the heart closest to the chest wall and provides the technician and physician with the best possible pictures of the heart. Unfortunately my left hip is the one I am having replaced so I had to lay on that hip the entire time. Needless to say it was extremely painful and I laid there crying the whole time. The technician asked me to stick around after my chest xray because there was something in the exam that had concerned her and she wanted to show it to a cardiologist immediately.
So I went out and had the xray and was returning to the waiting room when the echo tech found me in the hall and asked me to come back to her exam room. She asked me to sit down and the proceeded to tell me that during my Echo exam my heart rate had dropped into the 30's on three separate occasions and I also had some heart wall problem. The cardiologist wanted me to go immediately to the Emergency Department and sign in because he felt that I had, had or was having a heart attack.
Of course this information was NOT what I was expecting to hear and I was completely shocked. Tammy the Echo tech walked with me to the ED and waited while they signed me in and took me into triage. She kept saying she had never had this happen before and she was as surprised as I was over the results of my echo.
I had a EKG done in triage and was taken to a room in the ED where I was installed in one of the lovely hospital gowns and nurses and doc's began coming and going. My veins do not cooperate with needle sticks and they had a heck of a time drawing blood for tests. They had a little trouble getting my IV port installed but that at least worked. What little blood the did draw ended up clotting and they had to re-stick me for new samples.
I spent about two hours in the ED getting checked out and then was informed that I was going to be admitted for observation. I was transferred to East Tower 6 around 5PM. I had contacted my mother and my boys and they all drove up to Columbus to see me and make sure I was still alive! They arrived just as I was being rolled down the hallway to go to the unit. I think they were relieved to see I was ok and they stayed until 8PM. Then made the drive back to Dayton.
The night was uneventful and I slept fairly well in the hospital bed, which could actually be positioned to make my hip hurt less (such a lovely thing). And all the rooms at The Wexner Medical Center at the Ohio State University East Campus are private and cozy. The building itself is showing its age but I got WONDERFUL care and I would much rather have good care than be in a facility that looks pristine! Every person I encountered there was friendly and concerned about what was happening. I am very pleased with how attentive the cardiac team was to me and how quickly they assessed the situation and made recommendations.
I was laying in bed dozing on Friday and the nurse came in and asked me how I was feeling, had I been laying there for a while or had I been up. I answered that I had been dozing off and asked why and she told me that my heart rate had dropped again. This time it had dropped to 39 and she called the cardiology team back to the floor. Less than 5 minutes later the Medical student came back in and asked what I had been doing and told me that my rate had dropped again. One of the thoughts when going home was to run a holter monitor for a month. Nothing ever came of that idea though and I was discharged a couple of hours later with no holter monitor.
The PCA Alice walked with me to the door of the hospital (no wheelchair apparently they don't do that any more). I ended up running down to the pharmacy and getting my prescription filled and over to medical records to fill out a form to get copies of my records.
The drive back to Dayton was a bit nerve wracking. . . I stopped a couple of times just to take a break from the stress and still I was exhausted by the time I got home. On the drive I called and scheduled an appointment with my cardiologist Dr. Tim Markus for Thursday and an appointment with my dentist for Tuesday. It turns out I need to get Dental clearance as well before having a hip replacement. Luckily they had an opening this week so I am going to get it all taken care of although I forgot to ask about antibiotics for dental cleanings so I will need to call on Monday.
My job requires that I keep loaner bedside patient monitors on hand so I decided that if I could get some electrodes I would hook myself up over night to verify that my heart was not dropping for no reason. I could not find any electrodes so tried to tape the leads to my body. Unfortunately that did not work. My physician left me some of the kind they use in his office in an envelope on the door, but they are not the right kind either. I was able to use the gel as my conductor with the leads and tape to get a decent signal for a little while. My mom checked with people from her church choir, which is filled with hospital workers, but ended up calling the ED at the local hospital and asking if she could get some electrodes. They gave her a few and I was able to have the bedside monitor on all night watching what my heart was doing. I was also checking my blood pressure every few hours. It had gotten really high in the ED on Thursday (187/109) so I was very worried. My overnight results remained good though my lowest HR was 63 and my BP was in a reasonable range. No strange low drops which was great news.
Here is a picture of the monitor in use... my Iphone 4 takes awful pictures!!!
So I am back on the monitor for the night and will keep monitoring the situation until I get clearance from my doc!Peace out
