Recovering From CABBAGE: The First Days at Home

By Jim Rue

I am home at last after a week in the hospital following a quadruple Coronary Artery Bypass Graft, informally known on the ward as a CABBAGE. Before checking in for surgery I expected that I would stay an extra night or two in the hospital if the choice was available to me, just to make sure that all was well before striking off on my own. But after a week of constant light, noise and, let’s face it, more attention than I relished, lurching into my wheelchair and heading for the main entrance was a task I did not wish to delay any longer than necessary.

What a relief it is now to be back in my own home, in my own bed at last. What a joy to be free of all the wires, hoses, catheters, needles and IV drips. The nurses were all very nice but what a change it is to be responsible for monitoring my own condition. I have been told to watch my incisions for swelling, and my body temperature for fever, and to be very careful what I do. I am not to open or close windows by myself. I must not lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk, about eight pounds.

Blessed Escape

I live alone. The hospital asked probing questions about who would look in on me. I reassured them. I did not have a heart attack preceding my surgery. This was elective surgery, so I had done my homework beforehand. I had plenty of care waiting for me, I told them. In the event that I needed something done that I wouldn’t do for myself even if I were capable, I had phone numbers of local professional caregivers in my wallet. They were concerned about the stairs to my apartment. I told that I would climb them once to get into my apartment, and then I would stay there for a while. I would have told them anything. I wanted to go home.

So now it is noon of my first day home, and I am alone for the first time in more than a week. For a short while I am elated. I will bounce back quickly; faster than Bill Clinton. But now the painkillers are wearing off. I take some more and go to bed. After a fitful, uncomfortable sleep punctuated by aches, cramps, careful, deliberate bathroom breaks (urinary catheters are not without their benefits) and more drugs, it is morning. A good friend, the one who brought me home from the hospital, looks in on me. She brings me breakfast in bed. Gratitude. It’s very nice.

The Routine

An hour later another friend wakes me up. He has brought a covered plate for me, and puts it in the fridge for me. He soon leaves. More gratitude. More drugs. In the mid-afternoon I wake up feeling as if I am sleeping my life away. Another friend brings me a sandwich and some flowers.

I don’t feel great. The painkillers have worn off, by and large. But I am restless and not in much pain. It is Friday afternoon, and I generally gather with friends on Friday afternoons for a short repast of soup. I call another friend to beg a ride, asking him to deliver me to the very doorstep of our destination and then pick me up again immediately on my command. He agrees to do that. I am aware that the surgeon would take a dim view of this plan, but I am anxious to get started on my rehabilitation, and determined to instruct the locals that I will not that easily be put down.

Getting Out and Around – like an idiot

I dodder around preparing. I check my dressings and wriggle oh-so-carefully into slacks and dress shoes. I have an open wound on my right leg extending from my groin to the middle of my ankle, secured by, I was told by the surgeon, a single long stitch. Because of this, bending my knee is a problem. Putting on my right sock is the challenge of the day. Fifteen minutes of awkward fumbling with a back-scratcher and a shoehorn and I am golden.

I arrive at our destination and make my grand, hobbling entrance. The event has begun and a dozen people watch me arrive. Most of them know that exactly one week ago I was down and out, my body on ice on the metal operating table, in a very deep sleep indeed. One by one, each of the women at the party approaches to express their dismay that I am there at all. They don’t say so but I can see by the look on their faces that I look like Death. It’s a good thing I don’t feel as bad as they think I look, I think to myself. I gratefully slurp a bowl of soup and soon head for the door.

Back at home it has been more than six hours, the minimum time since my last dose of pain medication. Without stopping to question, I down the prescribed quantity of Vicodin and get into bed.

Falling Off Buildings

The night is one of the longer ones in my life. People plied me with food all day. I ate some of each, and all of some, and my stomach is flip-flopping like a candidate on the stump. My back hurts. The process of prying the two halves of my sternum apart was likely to crack one or two ribs, the doc said. I have cramps in my extremities. The ‘zipper’ down my chest, covered with a sterile dressing, which I must not disturb, itches enough to drive me to distraction, and there are phantom jabs of pain from parts of my right leg where there is otherwise no sensation. I wake up in the morning feeling worse than ever. I feel as if I have fallen off a ten-story building.  Everything hurts.

Television. Vicodin. Bathroom. Slurp something. Sleep. Television. Vicodin. Eat. Bathroom. It is a Matrix-like routine that I will follow for another ten days. But each day, the general discomfort level decreases a little. On day three I feel as if I have fallen from a five-story building. By day ten, the building can’t be more than one story high, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Sneezing Like a Wuss

On toward sundown of my second day home, I sneeze. I have been warned in advance about sneezes, coughs and hiccups. I grab the pillow I was given for the purpose and clutch it to my chest as tightly as I dare. When the sneeze comes it is a namby-pamby, girlie-man kind of an ‘at-soo’ sneeze, not the kind of hearty cleansing sneeze I am used to at all. It feels as if the hand grenade I swallowed for lunch has just detonated. The sneeze rocks my world, and everything hurts for an hour afterward.

For the week following my release from the cardiac care unit, I can tell you the time of day and day of the week of each sneeze. In a week there were ten, and I believe I will remember each of them for as long as I live.