They placed a sandbag on my groin to apply pressure to the puncture wounds. I was not allowed to bend my right leg for a few hours. I asked them to attach a hospital restraint to my foot to remind me. It was quite comfortable and made one less thing I had to worry about. One of the nurses was surprised about the restraint, but I reassured her that I had asked for it. It actually worked very well. If you should find yourself in a similar situation and think it would help, then by all means ask for it.

To my chest they attached a bunch of leads that went to a little Hewlett-Packard telemetry device, a box the size of a Walkman and a battery that lasts about ten times as long. My EKG was displayed on a TV monitor above my bed. Another device automatically measured my blood pressure every half hour. It was all very cool.

By the way, if you’re the kind who asks what good the space program is, you should consider that the remote sensing and telemetry of my EKG and blood pressure (and for other patients, their breathing, temperature, and oxygen saturation levels) were all originally developed for our brave Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts. Somebody might have invented this stuff without the space program, but it would probably have taken longer and still be too expensive for routine use in a cardiac care unit. Who cares about Teflon and Tang? The benefit I count is being able to walk about the CCU without dragging a bunch of wires all around.

My heart rate was 80 BPM when I entered the CPU and it steadily declined to my normal resting rate, around 60 BPM. At 58 BPM my EKG monitor started getting worried and beeped at me. My blood pressure was also elevated to begin with, but descended over time to 120/60, a fairly good number.

Peeing in bed is difficult. The mechanics of it are actually fairly easy for a man, and the urinal bottle is well designed. However, it’s not easy to get over the physical stuff you learn when you’re a little kid—don’t pee in bed!—and there’s just not as much pressure on your bladder when you’re lying down. But once you get over that, it’s easier to get going. I had taken in a lot of fluids through my IV, and in the CCU they encouraged me to drink more water. That helped, too. Soon everything came out all right.

I will always remember one of the nursing assistants. Louie was a tireless, cheerful, kind nurse for me. He gently and politely checked my vital signs and thanked me every time. I could detect not the least bit of icky reaction from him when he emptied my urinal. I told him that my mother had once said that I should move to San Francisco and find myself a boyfriend who can cook. Louie smiled and told me that unfortunately he couldn’t cook. I think he took my flirting as a positive sign of my recovery. All the nurses were competent and helpful, but Louie was special.

By 9:00 PM I was ready to walk about. Louie helped me. I was ready to just get up and go, but he insisted that I take it slowly and carefully. He was so kind and I didn’t want to be a pest, so I followed his guidance. Walking felt good to do, but it was, surprisingly, really tiring after two minutes. But it was a good tired, like after winning a hockey game. Louie remade my bed and put baby powder on my back.

After that I went to bed and was ready to sleep. Hospitals, however, are noisy places, and I’m a light sleeper. They had removed my blood pressure cuff, but it kept trying to measure my BP anyway, and it beeped every time it realized it wan’t attached to me. My wounds and IV were also making me uncomfortable. The bed was constantly shifting around to adjust for my movements, but it always made a noise and a little jerking motion when it did that, so it was always waking me up. Finally they just turned off the bed and the BP monitor and gave me Tylenol, Codeine and Valium so I could sleep.

Friday morning I had a nice big breakfast, with coffee! I had another walkabout, this time in my own clothes, but still with the EKG telemetry unit. I stopped at the nurse’s station and shooed some doctors out of the way so I could inspect my own EKG trace on the monitor. 80 BPM and a perfect-looking sinus rhythm. Then back to bed and a final blood pressure reading—140/60 as expected for having walked about briskly in the CCU.

I had my last squeamish moment as they took out the IV line, and then I was free to go. My brother was there to pick me up and take me home. I felt that the experience was worth at least a T-shirt, so we stopped by the Stanford University Bookstore and bought some.

Next: Home Again

Catheter Ablation for Tachycardia: My Experience as a Patient. Revised: 11/09/2001
URL: http://www.timberwoof.com/surgery/index.shtml
Copyright ©1998, 1999, 2001 by Michael Roeder. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use or distribution of any text, photos, or artwork from this website, without the express written permission of the owner, is in violation of U.S. and international copyright laws.
The author is a software engineer, not a physician. This web site is not intended to give any medical advice, render any diagnosis, or recommend any course of treatment. This web site has not been reviewed by any doctor. Your experience may differ from the author’s. If you have any heart symptoms, see your doctor.