Still in hospital but ready to go home

I was told off immediately by good friends as I even on the first day I was using my left arm to type and play Farmville.   OK I have to get my priorities right here; I didn’t want my crops to wither.  This is where the lymph nodes start to play a part.  Due to them being removed I was not allowed to use my left arm for at least a couple of weeks.  OK this is fine apart from I mainly left handed and use my left hand for everything; it is my stronger arm.  I am not sure exactly what they do but I now know that I cannot sit out in the sun without my left shoulder being covered; I cannot have a really hot shower, which I love etc etc life has suddenly not become fun.   I also cannot lift anything over two kg, now this not for a short time; these limitations are for the rest of my life which also includes the hot shower and sun.

Another one of life’s lessons is to take a piece of paper to write things down or have a good friend who has a better memory than you do.  It isn’t that there will be anything wrong with your memory but I think after a while it shuts itself down with too much information.  The relevant info, like turning up for appointments, was ok but after that my mind would often blank out when I tried to remember what a particular doctor or nurse told me something.


Bill's View

As it happens the government has recently invested heavily in coronary care (Portugal previously had a high mortality rate) and the Vila Nova de Gaia hospital (CHVNG) has world class facilities both for care and for surgery.  Within less than two days of first arriving at CHVNG, they carried out a procedure to insert a catheter from my wrist into my heart to ‘look’ at what was going on – all this with me wide awake and watching on a monitor.  I learned a lot about medicine during this time, because the staff were amazing and very happy to talk about their work! 

As soon as the catheter procedure had finished, the doctor in charge came out and explained that there are three main arteries that take the blood from my heart to the rest of my body.  Two of those were virtually completely blocked and the third was partially blocked.  He reckoned that the heart attacks were caused when the third artery went into spasm for some reason and became effectively blocked as well.  The only possible cure was a triple by-pass operation, which the hospital could perform if the surgical team accepted me as a suitable case for saving.  He agreed that perhaps concern for my wife – going for her own operation in two days time - might have been a contributory factor! 

The cardiologist firmly refused to let me leave the hospital while I waited for a slot in the operating theatre; he went as far as to make veiled threats that they could not guarantee the outcome if I left!  So Tina went into hospital without me, although she was probably better supported than if I had been available.  Like I said, the church folk were wonderful and our younger daughter had arrived from the UK to help out.  We gave her a car and a GPS and she spent most of the week driving between home and the two hospitals – keeping the family together.  Not bad for someone who cannot speak a word of Portuguese!

After about a week I was scheduled for my operation.  Tina had had hers and was already recovering quickly, albeit in a different hospital.  I must say, in honesty, that I searched my conscience and asked God if there was any reason why I was not ready to meet Him if anything went wrong.  I came to the conclusion that I knew that Jesus Christ had gone before me to prepare a place for me; but unlike Paul, I was not yet ready to say that I would rather go there just yet.  Call it a lack of faith if you like, but I could not escape the thought that our two daughters, the elder of whom was due to arrive at any time to take over from her sister, would clearly be very upset – but the worst was the feeling that I might not be there to take care of Tina throughout her long programme of treatment for her cancer.

The surgeons explained that they had to cut me down the middle; cut through the muscles which are centred in front of my chest; cut my sternum in half; open up my rib cage and get access to my heart.  This was scheduled for six hours but, in fact, took about eight.  They told me later (I didn’t know much about it at the time and they didn’t wake me up to ask!) that they had had to stop my heart and replace it with an external pump.  I’m not sure why – but it made the whole procedure more hairy!  However, the very good news was that the heart attacks had not caused any damage to my heart muscles – apparently the danger is that muscles start to overheat and burn out when there is no blood (with its precious oxygen).  However, in my case the heart had never been deprived of blood – it had been pumping away but the blood had nowhere to go.  Praise God!