Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Better Late Than Never
Friday, May 22, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Ben's back
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Satsuma Sashimi
Taking full advantage of my extended stay in Sydney to catch up with my Aunt and Uncle for dinner while they're in town for a meeting. On the menu was some fantastic Japanese. All the dishes were tasty and beautifully presented although the sashimi special and the grilled fatty tuna were particularly fantastic.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Escape!
Monday, May 04, 2009
Still a Mystery
"exercise" (i.e., walking down the hall) to help with the lungs. Hopefully the ~1 cm diameter chest drain can come out soon so I won't be dragging so many cables/tubes around.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
The Day After
After spending the night in the first class care that is the ICU, I (with attached drips, morphine pump, chest drainage tubes and monitoring electrodes) was moved to the cardiac ward. I scored a nice single room with en-suite and a view. On the agenda for the day, a full torso CT scan with contrast. That's 6 glasses of vile lemonade-from-hell flavored contrast chugged in quick succession.
Friday, May 01, 2009
O is for Operation
Well I survived surgery, all 25 min of it. Despite having a cannula installed in my left hand when I was admitted, the anesthesiologist had put a new extra large (~1 mm diameter) one in my right arm. With particularly low blood pressure, my veins were extra hard to find, making installing this IV a super fun process of trial and error (leading to considerable subsequent bruising). They also put in an arterial IV providing "on tap" blood for testing.
Apparently, while I was sleeping, they made a ~2 inch incision, spread some ribs apart, and pushed aside (i.e., collapsed) a lung to access the heart and put a drainage window in the pericardium. I'm guessing that I'll end up with the scars of a one-sided boob job without the associated augmentation.
Disclaimer: This post has been back dated to more accurately reflect the timing of events. In reality it would have been difficult to blog immediately following surgery in a post-anesthetic/morphine-induced haze with IV's in both hands/arms.
Apparently, while I was sleeping, they made a ~2 inch incision, spread some ribs apart, and pushed aside (i.e., collapsed) a lung to access the heart and put a drainage window in the pericardium. I'm guessing that I'll end up with the scars of a one-sided boob job without the associated augmentation.
Disclaimer: This post has been back dated to more accurately reflect the timing of events. In reality it would have been difficult to blog immediately following surgery in a post-anesthetic/morphine-induced haze with IV's in both hands/arms.
Parched
Nil by mouth from midnight = a very very thirsty patient waiting for late afternoon surgery. My morning ultrasound showed a ~1.5 cm shell of fluid surrounding the otherwise normal heart. Of course the extra external pressure had my heart beating more than twice as fast as normal. Incidentally, its quite fascinating to watch one's heart+valves at work.
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