Today is Tuesday, April 26, five days after the doctors inserted the subcutaneous implantable defibrillator and lead with defibrillation threshold evaluation/reprogramming into the left side of my chest, just below my left underarm. There is a much smaller incision at the center of my chest. Both areas have remained pretty sore, but today the pain is much more bearable.
Strangely, when my right knee joint was replaced two years ago, I felt almost no pain. Doctors and nurses seemed to be astounded whenever I said my pain level was about 0.5. I remember taking one of the hydrocodone/acetaminophen pills after the knee operation was completed, but this time I have been popping the pills every six hours like clockwork! The pain has stayed around 2.5 from the time I was in the hospital except for the time that I have been asleep. Today, actually, the pain has pretty much subsided and now it is going into the itchy stage, which I think means it is healing.
Saturday evening, I went to bed on my flat, non-hospital prop-your-head-up bed. I slept pretty soundly, but I had great difficulty getting out of bed. It may have been paranoia that I would pull apart the wound which was just held together by the Dermabond surgical glue and, of course, there was no nurse to help me to get out of the bed. There is no bandage. The surgical fellow who discharged me on Saturday morning assured me that there was no real need for the paranoia, but based on past experience with my appendectomy from nearly sixty years ago, I sort of felt like there should be something holding my innards in - like stitches and lots of gauze. But that no longer is the name of the game. Even my knee a couple of years ago didn't really have much of a dressing covering the wound. And like that wound, stitches are supposed to organically dissolve. (Actually, the knee had stalples rather than stitches and the chests incisions had only glue.)
Visually, the little defibrillator that is under my skin doesn't really protrude too much, however, since it is a new permanent fixture, even though it only sticks out a tiny bit, it seems like a foreign object that I'm sure I will eventually get used to.
Sunday night and Monday night, I slept in my recliner in the livingroom to avoid the fifteen minute ordeal that getting out of bed was on Sunday morning, but I think I will try to sleep in my bed again tonight because I did sleep much more soundly in my lovely queen size bed which allows for much more sprawling.
Thursday, the monitor box is supposed to flash and I'm supposed to press the button to send all the data from the little box inside of my body. It is my understanding that the monitor box will flash weekly on Thursdays to let me know that it is time to press the button. My CPAP monitors my nightly sleep pattern, but I don't have to press any buttons to submit data . . . it just sends the data every night. And I just take the little SD card to the pulmonologist and he extracts the data at my yearly appointments.
All of these new gadgets make me feel like I should be able to do outstanding feats of superhuman strength like Col. Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, but alas, despite the new body parts and/or enhancements, it just keeps my lungs breating and my heart beathing and my joints bending!
Interestingly, there there are no warnings against getting the incision wet. Normal hygiene is possible. However, I have been admonished to just pat dry.
I went to church Sunday morning for a special Earth Day outdoor service. Yesterday I took the bus to pick up some stuff I needed from the store. And right now I am at Starbucks using up their unsecure wi-fi to type up this blog entry. Things are more normal than they were in the first month of Covid lockdown. But I think that is how it is supposed to be.
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