- Joined
- Dec 1, 2016
- Messages
- 327
- Reaction score
- 149
I had a double bypass operation in 2012 after a heart attack. After a cup of coffee at 7 am I was walking around and felt my hands grow hot and started tingling.No chest or arm pain,just some indigestion.Spent a week at Bendigo Base before they found a bed for me at a Melbourne hospital. After two days the op started.First phase was shaving my chest which the nurse botched up and the head nurse told me to do it properly myself.I thought I was going to die there due to the bungling.Next the minister came and gave me the last rites and asked if I was frightened.I said NO I was looking forward to it as I did not want to stay in limbo with two stomach injections every day.They wheeled me just outside the theatre and cut a hole in the back of my neck without anesthetic to thread a balloon into the heart to keep it open when the blood supply was diverted to a mechanical pump during the operation.The general anesthetic was given in the theatre and I woke up in the recovery room and after a couple of hours the nurse got me to walk around this large room and I volunteered to to two laps instead of one.After 6 days recovery I was going home next morning when my heart started fibrillating and that night I had a second operation.They stopped my heart and inserted a " boot" into my esophagus to look for blood clots and then restarted my heart. After 2 days I was discharged and had to walk all the way to the car which was exhausting.The previous guy had full health cover and got wheeled out by a male nurse.