subject: Making Practical Arrangements for Heart Disease [print this page] Once you are informed by the medical authorities about when you need to hospitalized, and which drugs should be taken up till specific time and so on are the things, which is told to you a week or two before you finally need to be operated. But if you still have any confusion, you can contact medical or hospital authorities and your doctor for some quick advice.
The period of time that you need to spend in hospital during the course of operation, you need to do certain practical arrangements, such as if you live alone, ask someone to look after you when you came back home, or seek help from someone to look after your home and your pets in your absence or during the recuperation period. The following information is based on London's St George's Health care Trust leaflet, Preparing for Heart Surgery:
- Decide with whom you will come back home from hospital.
- Ask your family member or friend to bring a cushion to keep it between your chest and seat belt, if you are driven home by car.
- You can go to convalescence home after operation.
- For the first two weeks after operation, you need a family member to help you doing common tasks.
Before leaving for hospital, check the list given to you of things you need to take to hospital. You will be hospitalized a day or two before the surgery and during that time different tests will be taken, such as ECG, x-ray, urine and blood tests so that doctors have a perfect picture of your body and health. You might be asked about drinking or smoking habits etc. be honest and tell everything honestly to ensure quick recovery.
The anesthetist may also visit you before your surgery and inform you about the process involved in it. If you have hairs on chest, they will be shaved and you are not allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight as anesthesia works well with an empty stomach.
On the day of surgery, you will be given tranquilizer in slight amount to keep you calm, all the way through your surgery electrodes will be attached to you so as to monitor the functions of your heart. Then you will be given anesthetic drug through the intravenous lines inserted in your arm veins or wrist so that the anesthetist directly drip drug into your bloodstream in order to keep your body level balanced. One such line threaded its way up to the larger vein near heart, called vena cava.
One such tube is used to monitor your blood pressure and oxygen level in arteries. Catheters or fine tubes are also inserted in your neck vein to have a check on your blood flow and arterial pressure. A urinary catheter should also be used to collect the urine and to cheek the functions of the kidney. A tracheal tube connected with a respirator (a machine that breathes for you) is inserted into your windpipe. Nasogastric tube is also there to collect the stomach fluid.
