Update

• by swimmer212
• 2013-05-29 06:05:39
• General Posting
• 923 views
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It's been exactly 2 weeks since my first pm. It took 4 hours. Thank God they gave me general anesthesia. It took much longer than they anticipated because the implantation was difficult. They placed the generator below my left ribs on my side. The lead is placed on the left side right by my vagal nerve stimulator battery. I had a lot of pain afterwards. I had to get a PCA pump so I ended up staying 3 nights. My arm has finally stopped hurting so much. It throbbed for days. I'm experiencing some chest pain at times. Is this normal? It's intermittent. I plan to go back to work for the first time since Feb next Wednesday. Got patients to care for.
Since my surgery, my mom had a cath done last Wednesday. She has scleroderma, history of heart attack and triple bypass in 2007, and chronic myelogenous leukemia. Her cath showed constrictive pericarditis, severe tricuspid valve regurgitation, and blockages of her bypasses. They recommended after doing a MRI, to do a pericardiectomy (remove the pericardium), tricuspid valve replacement, and redoing the bypasses. She lost at least 12 pounds of fluid. Now they decided to wait 3 weeks, repeat an echo and MRI. They might end up doing all of it, just the valve and bypasses, or possibly just stents. We're all praying for stents. Her EF is 70%, which is awesome. Better than mine. Does anyone have experience about pericariectomies?