(Ein wichtiger Hinweis: Ich bin medizinischer Laie. Ich habe nur lange mit meiner Krankheit gelebt. Ich kann alles medizinische hier falsch verstanden oder falsch wiedergegeben haben. Jede in diesem Text wiedergegebene Information ist potentiell aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen, falsch, unvollständig. Hört auf Euren Arzt! Fehler sind meine Fehler, nicht die meiner Ärzte.Meine Erfahrungen sind anekdotisch. Eure Erfahrungen können anders sein.)
Sleeping on your back
It’s sometimes the small things that you only miss once you have to do without them for a while. Things you normally don’t even think about. Sleeping on your side, for example. If you’re a side-sleeper. Or showering. When you can’t.
From my research about the time after the operation, I knew that the greatest practical horror for many people facing a heart operation consisted of having to sleep on their back for a while.
Since the chest first has to heal, it’s not a good idea to sleep on your side or on your stomach. The wires do hold the chest stably together, but nevertheless you should, for the time being, strike these sleeping positions from your brain for a while.
I’m a side-sleeper, and I’d reckoned with many wakeful nights in the following weeks. In the weeks before the operation I’d already sometimes tried to sleep on my back. I failed every time and had to turn onto my side. That boded nothing good for the time after the operation.
For me, the question arose anyway of how you’re supposed to ensure, in your sleep, not to turn onto your side. I turn enough as it is while I’m lying in bed. How was I supposed to force myself, in the unconscious state of sleep, to stay lying on my back? Practice was to bring the answer: it’s relatively easy. The body tells you very clearly, with pain, when you try to turn into precisely this side position or even stomach position. The body then simply leaves it at some point. Quite simple, really. As a result, I woke up regularly at night in the first while, until I’d finally learned it and could sleep through. And then I stayed on my back. For many days.
Sleeping on your side
The closer the discharge came, the more the constant lying on my back annoyed me. You don’t have much else to do but either sit at a table or lie in bed.
And then the day came. A nurse told me: if you’re careful, you may now also lie on your side at times. A step back into normality, after the access line I wrote about in the last chapter had moved me away from it. I lay on my side afterwards. I fell asleep. I slept like a stone.
The feeling was simply indescribable. My back must have celebrated quietly that day. In my head it certainly did. I still had to take care to turn only onto my left side, not to the right or even onto my stomach. But in that moment I didn’t care about that at all.
Discharge
In the end I went through a lot. Operation, corona, isolation, atrial fibrillation. My innards didn’t find that so great either, with the antibiotics. But at some point I was fit enough that an acute hospital was no longer the right place for me.
On 16 October I was then discharged from the hospital. In the end it was 17 days that I stayed in the acute hospital.
Even before the operation I’d been looking forward to the day on which I’d come out of hospital again. There’s a tradition in my family of the celebration cake. A big slice of gateau when a family member comes out of hospital. There I then don’t give a hoot about vegan either. I’d been feverishly looking forward to this cake. But here too again: good plan. It just turned out quite differently.
First of all I had to be prepared for discharge. On the day I was supposed to be discharged, this wasn’t yet a hundred per cent settled early in the morning. That day I’d finally had quite enough of not being able to simply shower, and I asked whether it could somehow be made possible for me to get under the shower. The nurse then enabled me to shower by removing the monitor and taping over the cable from my chest. It wasn’t quite optimal, since the cable plaster then did get damp under the shower.
You have no idea how lovely a shower is when, for almost 17 days, you’ve had to wash around the cables and catheters. How strenuous this washing-around is. How much you celebrate the warm water. Becoming human in the wet room. Shortly after I felt fit for civilisation again, the information then also came that I was allowed to leave the hospital.
You do remember the cable that poked out of my chest. That first had to be pulled. This pulling felt extremely strange. It didn’t hurt. So not the “it doesn’t hurt” that then only turns out to be “it hardly hurts” or “compared to other things it’s nothing.” But not at all. I’d prepared myself for more, and then it turned out to be very unspectacular. It just feels very strange. I don’t even know how to describe it. Just strange. You feel something being pulled out. But that was it. Plaster on and done. After all, there’s still a sutured wound there. I first wanted to ask whether I could take the cable with me as a souvenir. But then I left it after all.
Pull the last access line. Pack things. Hang everything I’d brought along around the wheeled suitcase in such a way that I could carry it all at once. Wait for the doctor’s letter, which was handed to me in an envelope by the senior physician along with the prescriptions for the medication for the first days. Those were the last steps in the Albertinen hospital. And that was it. 17 days of hospital drew to a close.
My brother-in-law couldn’t pick me up immediately. I was allowed to stay a little longer, since the room wasn’t needed straight away. For that I’m grateful to the nurse. Because I either had to stay in my isolated room or be completely out of the hospital. An in-between thing – for example, waiting in the foyer – wasn’t possible because of my corona infection.
About an hour later I stepped out of the door. It was no triumphal striding-out of the hospital. High on the thought of having survived the operation and leaving the hospital on my own legs. Knowing that the problem had been eliminated.
Although “triumphal” is perhaps not the right word. “Happy” would be another, but that doesn’t quite fit either. More of a “yeah, what do you want, I survived the operation.” But this feeling didn’t set in either.
I still had corona. Even if the line on the test was less clear by now. It was enough that I stayed in isolation until the end. I had many questions in my head about how things would now go on. It was a quiet leaving of the hospital that had been my home for 17 days. Apple Maps at some point reckoned my home location was the hospital in Hamburg. It took weeks and a few detours for the maps app to notice that I still live in Lüneburg.
It also wasn’t a discharge in which I expressed my thanks to all the nurses. In the tests I was still SARS-CoV-2 positive. I left my room with a mask. Quietly. It almost felt like a walk of shame. I couldn’t express my gratitude to anyone. I left the hospital, positioned myself in front of the hospital and waited until my brother-in-law picked me up. I couldn’t, after all, wait inside the hospital with corona.
I actually also wanted to leave a monetary thank-you at the hospital. But the last nurse I dealt with in the hospital said to me, in essence: “Go ahead and take a few latex gloves with you, we destroy all the consumables anyway.” They take the isolation measures very precisely in that hospital. Which I think is good in itself. Only, as already said: I was at the wrong end of the measures. I wanted the gloves so that I wouldn’t leave anything behind on some lift button. What does that have to do with the thank-you? Well … if even the boxes with the gloves that I never touched are destroyed, what did that mean for the monetary thank-you that I definitely had touched?
I also think they were grateful in the hospital that I could now go. Because, admittedly: caring for someone in isolation is a lot of work. Even if it’s just the constant taking off and putting on of protective clothing. Despite all the work I caused, every single person I dealt with in the hospital was very kind. And I can only recommend the hospital.
The celebration cake happened when I was Covid-negative a few days later and could go to my parents’. I only managed half of the slice of gateau. And there I then also noticed that the follow-up rehabilitation treatment, which followed the hospital stay for further recovery, was probably a very good idea. Because I was far from fit yet. Not even fit enough for a big slice of gateau.
I have to thank my brother-in-law for driving me with a still minimally positive corona test. I rate that very highly of him! I did assume that the test, after ten days, had only found fragments of viruses, since the line on the test really was only minimally visible. But I’m no expert on these tests. I only dimly remembered one of the podcasts with Prof. Dr. Drosten. And I couldn’t guarantee it. He nevertheless didn’t hesitate to pick me up. I had such a bad conscience that I pressed my mask to my face for the whole drive home, to really seal the smallest leak. Probably daft, too. But I didn’t want to sit in the car any other way. I didn’t infect my brother-in-law with corona on this drive, and for that I’m extremely grateful to this day.
Intermezzo
I couldn’t go into the follow-up rehabilitation treatment straight away. Not because of corona. I simply had an admission appointment that was only scheduled a few days later. As I said, I was at home in between for a few more days. I wasn’t really doing all that well during that time.
However, I was already very happy to be sleeping in my own bed again at last. I slept a lot during this time. My own bed helped me to really recover.
And yet, before the operation, I’d already considered getting myself an intermediate step between the hospital beds and my own bed. I did mention that after the operation you have to, or rather should, sleep on your back. In my planning for the operation I’d wanted to take that into account already. The question haunted my head: will I be able to sleep on my back at all if an adjustable bed base doesn’t more or less force me onto my back? That was my thought before the operation.
I remembered, however, that I’d once sat for a few days very regularly in a very comfortable armchair by a well-known manufacturer (a kind of opposite of Stressful). Wouldn’t such an armchair be an option if I couldn’t sleep on my back in bed? There the shape of the armchair would have forced me into the back position. I thought it would be worth a try.
However, I’d come up with this idea rather late. Unfortunately I was therefore informed by all the suppliers of these armchairs that it was too late for an order to receive it by the desired date. Immediately available models weren’t an option either, due to the available sizes. And yet there were still four weeks until the operation. Even taking my hospital stay into account (I reckoned on ten days), nobody wanted to promise that I’d receive the armchair in time. Under the circumstances I forwent the order.
I have to say in hindsight: thank goodness. Because, as I already wrote, on my return I was already a side-sleeper again. Saved a lot of money. At the beginning I was annoyed that it would no longer work, but here too everything turned out fine.
The money for it I’ll now hold back for a decent office chair. My backside will, for the foreseeable future, dwell on this considerably longer than in any armchair in front of the television, which I only use for virtual cycling anyway.
I suspect the whole armchair situation was, again, a case of “worrying too much,” because you’re placed before this big, eerie situation of the operation. If you’re to take the situation as an indicator: you should at some point stop planning the time after the operation ever more precisely. It turns out quite differently from what was foreseen anyway.
Hospital fashion
At some point I took away, from my observations at the airport – waiting for my flight – that most private travellers on the way to their holiday are always wearing something new. Something that looks so new that you have to assume that this clothing is probably being worn for the first time on the trip. Not already a few days beforehand. But really only on the morning of departure.
I have the impression that a hospital stay has similar consequences for one’s wardrobe. You don’t want to embarrass yourself, although I suspect that the hospital staff couldn’t care less how you lie there in bed.
Although: there’s a somewhat older story in my circle of relatives and acquaintances. It’s about a gentleman who hastily threw together clothes when his wife had to go to hospital lickety-split. A child announced, through contractions, that it now intended to be born. He overlooked the bag already specially and carefully packed, in the extremely understandable stress of the situation. So the wife ended up in hospital with the oldest clothes she had. Until the gentleman brought along the correct bag. For the protection of personality rights I won’t write now who that was. To you both: you know, if you read this text, that you’re meant.
That would guaranteed have happened to me too. This calamity in the stress of birth doesn’t seem to be unusual. I’m currently unsure whether this situation played out two or three times in my circle of relatives and acquaintances over the years.
Something similar happened to me with my luggage for the hospital. The problem described above I didn’t have, of course, due to the planned operation date. I took my luggage in hand myself. And so I knew what the correct luggage was.
I’d packed quite early. However, I managed, despite all the preparation, to still throw old socks into the case. Including a pair of which one sock had two accesses to the interior of the sock. I’d noticed last-minute that there were no socks in my case. At least I believed so. So I reached for the contents of a box. It was to turn out to be the box for the sorted-out socks. Those socks that were either broken, washed-out or partnerless. Although here too it applies: better old socks than no socks at all. The socks weren’t missing from the case at all, in the end. I’d just not seen them, because I’d “built” them into an empty space in the case in such a way that they weren’t visible. I didn’t want to turn up at the hospital with two cases. But what do you expect when, in your mind, you’re already lying on the operating table in hospital.
To come back to the subject of pyjamas: you’ll remember, in 2019 I acquired two super-old-fashioned pyjamas. This time I’d managed to buy pyjamas in good time. With these the last design review wasn’t in the middle, but only in the last decade of the same century. I even took them along. Unpacked and washed. The bottoms were and are in lively use. But the tops with a button placket I didn’t wear a single time. That damned button placket that prevented buying anything modern. That damned button placket that made buying the pyjamas very complicated.
My tip at this point: tracksuit jackets are just as good. And you need one or two tracksuits at least in the follow-up rehab anyway, for the sport that’s part of the rehab programme.
If you want to buy something for the time in hospital after the operation that really helps you: there are shoes that you can simply step into and with which you don’t have to bend down to tie them. Because they’re not for tying. This kind of shoe is worth its weight in gold. Really!
I bought some clothes before the operation (e.g. a slightly too big tracksuit jacket, so that I could wear the tubes and devices underneath). I’d have got by just as well with the things I already had. Except with the shoes. I’d have had considerably more to struggle with if I’d had normal shoes. It would have been considerably more painful without these shoes, since I’d have had to bend down to my feet.
