walking the tightrope between life & death / di pinagkakait ang healthcare part 2

[ Note : not the most organized blog post kabayan and friends, just a mishmash halo-halo of scattered thoughts I tried to put together; thanks for your patience! ]

FOR THE first time in my life, something other than my heart would be pumping blood throughout my body, and I would be dependent on that device for the next four to six hours while my heart was being mended, and then and only then would my heart be revived.

Also, my heart would be “slowed down” in the meantime, and be brought back to action gradually. How, I hadn’t been able to ask, too many questions, and too many things to think about…

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To my fourth-grade mind, that was how things were explained, and using logic and better judgment, I had the strong feeling that everything was being taken care of. The doctors had done the procedure dozens if not hundreds of times, and I, like many patients who’d undergone a similar procedure, would lead a near-normal to normal life that 99% would find decently enjoyable.

Added to all these, so many people were praying for me. Madami akong utang na kailangan pang bayaran. 🙂 Not a bad deal.

If you’ve read this far Precious Reader / Kabayan that’s how the rest of my blog goes, and in a nutshell it’s pretty well summarized. But if you want to read on, well…

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AFTER I WAS transferred from the small-town (not really a small town, it was the second-largest town in the region) hospital to Christchurch Hospital, with world-class facilities, I would be operated on in 72 hours.

Because there was a nurses’ / health workers’ strike, my surgery was nearly postponed for a day, until it was learned essential personnel would stay on (whew) and the surgery would go on as originally scheduled.

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I began to ask silly questions like: Would my heart stop beating while it was being fixed? What were the chances I’d need replacement as opposed to repair (it was a small part of my heart that was malfunctioning)?

Turned out my questions weren’t that silly after all, but only that my questions were leading to answers that needed more questions. Yes my heart would stop working, but would be revived soon afterwards (when? why?) The doctor would find out during the surgery if I needed repair or replacement.

Because I would be literally in the middle of the worlds of living and NOT living, I resolved to myself that, as soon as it was within my power to do so, I would wake up, wake up WAKE UP NOEL…

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THE FIRST THING I SAW WAS a semi-digital, semi-analog clock on the wall, symbolic of the half-life that I just escaped.

It would also remind me of the massive nausea and throat-dryness side effect that I would experience hourly, shortly after I woke up.

I remembered a smiling Mahal, who was so happy I sailed through the surgery with flying colors (although I didn’t feel that way), then going back to sleep…

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AND THEN waking up hourly from nausea, wanting to dry retch and moisten my parched throat. I literally woke up 8 to 9 times between the 8 to 9 hours between consciousness and the time I was supposed to have had enough rest.

Because I consciously chose not to take anything by mouth for at least 48 hours brought about by nausea, I literally lost 2 to 3 kg besides the weight already lost before surgery.

But even then, I was already starting to recover. Despite my extreme discomfort from having three drainage tubes and four I.V. tubes, I was already gaining strength from the new-found efficiency of my heart, and the doctors doing their rounds knew me better than I knew myself. Start walking around the ward corridors as soon as you can stand up, Noel. Set a target of six times around the ward floor.

SIX TIMES, did you say Doc? Nope, didn’t mishear, didn’t misread. Holding my bucket of fluids and drained wastes from the surgery, I did my first walk 48 hours after the surgery. It was more like a crawl, really, but a good start nevertheless.

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Back to reality kabayan : At the last moment, the cardiothoracic surgeon found that my tiny gateway between heart chambers wasn’t that beat up after all, made as much use of the usable parts, tidied the part of my heart that was opened up, sewed me back up, and sent me on my way to a newfound, heart-mended life.

I can go back to whatever activities I did before my surgery, within reason, gradually start lifting heavy objects, and of course, for the rest of my life I’m on maintenance drugs to avoid blood clotting, avoid fluids in the heart and lungs and many other situations better to avoid.

I’m still on rehab. After all, it was major surgery that I just had, and I lost a lot of weight, from the stress and all the side effects of the drugs I needed before, during and after the surgery.

I owe a lot to the public health system without which I would not be alive today, and to family and friends too many to mention. Let me just remember that to you Mahal, brothers George and Tim, sis-in-law Hazel, and daughter Nicole, I am indebted for the rest of my life.

OFW ka man, Permanent resident or citizen, sa panahon ng gipitan, di ka pababayaan ng health system ng New Zealand.

Ultra lucky to be in New Zealand, and what else can I do but pay it forward?

Thanks for reading, mabuhay!