The "First Steps" To Recovery

Here's what it looked like the first time I stood up and moved around after my surgery. It's probably a little less than 24 hours after I woke up. I was still coming down from the effects of anesthesia and I was heavily medicated for pain so I don't recall exactly what happened, but I had been moved from my bed to a chair. It might have been time to get up and move around or maybe the nurses were killing two birds with one stone and getting my bed ready for something and making me move around at the same time. It doesn't really matter what the reason was they would have done this to me anyway. Once the nurses get a patient out of bed and into a chair it's only a matter of time before it's time to start walking. It's really good for heart-surgery patients to get on their feet. and move around. No, that isn't sarcastic.

Walking might not seem like a safe thing or a comfortable thing to do so soon after surgery for a patient like me (and it's not comfortable, let's not make any mistakes about that) but it makes the healing process go so much faster and it does this for a couple reasons. First, the combined effects of anesthesia, laying for over 24 hours straight and surgery inside the chest cavity lead to a lot of fluid in the area and moving around helps your body get rid of it faster and push it out the drainage tubes sewn into my body. Secondly, the surgery also leads to a lot of fluid in the patients' lungs and making them breathe hard and deeply makes the lungs clear faster. Lastly, if you don't move around much you can get blood clots in your legs and those can cause strokes and heart attacks. Guess what! Walking around makes blood clots go away or never form in the first place.

OK with no further ado here is the video of me standing and walking. Take note of my beautiful IV tree. Also, the boxes my nurse is carrying connect to my insides via chest tubes and are used to drain away fluid building up in my chest.

Besides walking and sitting up to clear my lungs and chest cavity I was also encouraged to do breathing exercises every hour to increase my lung capacity and to cough. Both of those things hurt more than walking but, they helped get rid of all the fluid and ultimately made me feel stronger. The person who invented the phrase, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," was probably a heart-surgery patient because everything that helps you recover from it hurts like a bitch and makes you want to use inappropriate language, but in the end it makes you better faster.