Heart Attack - Recovery - Its a Long Road

I was in the ICU ,conscious and having survived the immediate danger of the heart attack and the emergency surgery. I was now in recovery mode, which in all honesty would take two years.

One of the things I had to endure was acclimating to normal living again. For about two weeks I had been unconscious; either machines or people had done everything they could for me. It was now time for me to do for myself. The first few days in ICU it was considered a victory when I was able to get out of bed (with help of course), shuffle to the chair a foot away and sit in it. Early in this process I had an event, for lack of a better term. I was sitting in the chair and I started coughing. One of the drawbacks of being unconscious for long periods of time is that mucus builds up in the back of the throat and has no way of being disposed. The nurses try to suction it out, but they couldn’t do a very good job of it due to the intubation tube that was placed down my throat. As I started to cough and then gag, I was frightened that I would split open my incision because of the pressure I felt throughout my body.

I guess I looked frantic; fortunately the nurse was with me, she instinctively knew what was happening and told me to let it out. I did; I threw up all that mucus all over the front of my hospital gown and to my amazement and appreciation all the nurse said was, “Are you done?” When I shook my head yes, she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m going to get a clean gown for you.” Without condescension or disgust, she cleaned me up explained to me what I've described here and went about her business. There were other episodes in the process of my recovery, but I think this description will suffice. That was the beginning of my recovery. I may have spent a conscious week in the ICU and every day nurses would come by and say how happy they were to see me conscious and alive. I was sitting in my chair one day and this young girl, a nurse about my eldest daughter’s age, was walking by my room. She looked in, stopped and walked in. With tears in her eyes she asked me if she could hug me; I said yes. She did. She told me she took care of me after the surgery and she did not think I was going to make it and she was very happy to see that I was alive.

Another time a middle aged nurse stopped by the room; she was talking to the nurse that was attending to me and turned to look at me and said, “I’m glad to see you made it; we did not know if you would. So many people that come to ICU don’t; we like to see it when someone does. You don’t remember me, but I was one of the nurses that looked after you after your surgery.” As my condition improved, they sent me back to the Ginsburg wing, back to the floor I was on before the emergency surgery. I was quickly referred to as the “miracle man”. I guess they thought I was going to die. I remained in the hospital for a number of weeks after the emergency surgery, as my nephrologist attempted to get my kidneys to come back to a fully functioning status. The very first thing that concerned me from the moment I realized I had a heart attack until I was released by my nephrologist was: what kind of life would I have when this was all over? I knew that not everyone survived a heart attack intact. I knew there could be life-changing complications. When I awoke from the emergency surgery and found that I needed to use a bag for bowel movements I was immediately concerned, but once the prognosis was explained to me I saw it as no more than a temporary inconvenience.

However, when they told me my kidneys were not working I was afraid my greatest fear would become real. I had met many people who live with kidney failure and my brother is one of them. This will change your life and not in a good way. I was afraid that I would have to spend two days a week on dialysis treatments. I had been exposed to what it is like to live this way and I knew this is not how I wanted to live the rest of my life. For those of you who have not been up close with the sickness let me briefly explain. I used to drive a cab here in Orlando and some of the clients we had were kidney patients. We would transport them back and forth to the treatment centers. I remember a portion of a conversation I had with one of these clients. He said, “There are seven days in week. I spend two days at the treatment facility; those two days are lost because by the time I'm done on the kidney machine I’m so tired, all I want to do is rest. The next day I feel good and live a more or less normal day. The following day I feel less energetic and more ill. The day after that is useless as I am headed back for dialysis and the cycle begins again. If I’m lucky I have one good day a week.”

That was the picture of the future I had in my mind for myself. To compound the problem, the nephrologist (who I think was a great doctor) could not definitely tell me my kidneys would come back. He told me he believed they could start working again, but he could not and would not say they would. I did not want to be connected to a dialysis machine. I did not want to get on a transplant list. I did not want to go through what my brother went through. I did not want my family to go through this either, but no one knew if my kidneys would come back. By the way, my brother got a transplant and is doing well with his new kidneys. While much of this experience was endured through a fog, I had moments of clarity and this was one of them. While I was being transported to the dialysis center I remember starting to pray, or maybe it was more of a plea. It was not a long prayer, as a matter of fact all the time I was in the hospital all of my prayers were very short. They were, by and large, “God, help me.” In this instance it was, “God, please repair my kidneys.” I wish I could say that my conversations with God were full of deep spiritual meaning and purpose, that they were full of faith and positive mental and verbal affirmations. I wish I could say they were steeped in memorized scriptural references. I wish I could say that they were based on claiming the promises of God.

In reality, I was much more like a child looking to his father for answers.

I was making simple request, “God help me, God heal me.”

I was looking for simple answers.

I was and am healed.

Here we are once again, a doctor doing all he knows to do and yet he is not assured of the results. He does not and cannot say with any real sense of conviction that this will work. I don’t know where the doctor places his hope or faith that his actions will be successful when he himself knows that they may not work. He is at the top of the food chain in his respective specialty, yet he cannot give a definitive answer. We come against that wall once again where man's knowledge is insufficient for the problem. I choose to ask the God who created me to heal me. My reasoning is simple; if he created me he can fix me. The nephrologist and I never discussed the possibility of a transplant, so I really don’t know if that was even an option. What he did was prescribe medication he thought would encourage or assist my kidneys in restarting. He kept a vigilant eye on my creatinine level. Creatinine level is how they determine if your kidneys are operating properly. (Normal levels of creatinine in the blood are approximately 0.6 to 1.2 milligrams (mg) per deciliter (dL) in adult males).  He allowed it to rise as high as possible before he scheduled a dialysis session.The highest number I remember is 8.

He believed that if I were put on a regular dialysis schedule, that would diminish the chances of reviving my kidneys. His hope was that in combination with the drug treatment, the kidneys would begin to work. Initially there was no improvement; the drugs did not appear to be having any effect. Every day everyone was watching the creatinine level - the doctor, me, my wife, my family, the nurses and friends. I had two additional dialysis sessions before my kidneys began to respond. They finally started to work, but they were not back to normal. The improvement in my kidney function was slow. I remained in the hospital until my doctor felt it was safe to allow me to leave. It would take months before they would return to a normal or near normal level.

Coming Soon Heart Attack - Recovery - Its a Long Road Part Two