April 20, 2009 - 3:15 PM

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Gary, Sharon, Susan, Christa and I got to see Lynn a little after noon. She was on a respirator, had about 100 tubes and wires draped over her, and was not awake, but she seems to be hanging in there. She will be in this ICU until tomorrow, late morning. The staff will begin working on getting her off the respirator in the next few hours. If all goes well, she may even be able to talk to me tonight. The nurse assigned to her said that she will be sending off status reports to me at various times during the next 24 hours. The first will be around 6PM. The next will be later in the evening, around 11PM. Finally, I should get another one from the night nurse around 6:45 to 7AM tomorrow morning. I will try to keep everyone posted when I get more news.

I also took a "class" this morning. One of the nurses has an hour long course that covers the types of surgery that can be done, and also covers extensively how a given patient should be cared for when they get home. One thing that really hit me was that Lynn's condition, where the left main is severely blocked, is called the "widow-maker". If that artery gets blocked, about 2/3 of the heart loses blood flow, and basically dies. This is the type of heart attack where a person just keels over, and is dead before they hit the ground. Also, another interesting fact - the arteries for the heart are only about a wide as a strand of spaghetti...doesn't take much to block one up.

Lynn is basically going to have to deal with three main circumstances. First, her sternum has to heal. There are all kinds of procedures that have been developed that tell people how to stand up, get out of bed, and move around that address this. The sternum is sawed in two, and then must be wired together...typically, four loops of stainless steel wire are used to hold things together. These wires have been known to break, which necessitates another operation to rewire them - not something that she is likely to deal with.

The second issue will be the heart itself. It is not supposed to be handled by human hands very much. Gotta run - will fill everyone in later!