Cardiac surgery

[MadScientist10]

Hi, I’ve posted on here before but never on this part of the forum. I wondered if anyone had any experience of cardiac surgery (valve replacement/repair) and how you coped post-op. I’ve got two young children and although I have support I’m starting to go over things and worry! Op is scheduled within the next week or so. Any tips or links to support groups would be great, thanks!

My mother had surgery for aortic valve replacement when she was 72, so obviously didn’t have to cope with young children, she did have a slow recovery to start with but that was down to her RA, but 4 months later she was repairing the roof on her shed
How old are your children?

That’s amazing! Although I think even in perfect health I wouldn’t be very good at shed repair

My kids are nearly 5 and 2.5. It’s a congenital valve problem so I wish that it had lasted another 10 years before it needed fixing/replacing but there we are.

No personal experience but just experience of looking after patients post op.

Most feel OK in the first few days post op, normally because they are resting well in hospital and have good pain relief.

You need to expect to be feel pretty washed out when you then go home for the next few weeks. It's true what they say - you need to REST. After a couple of weeks you'll feel tempted to do more things / walk further / lift more etc but you really need to keep it lower levels of activities as possible. So make sure you have a good support network in place / plans for your children etc. for someone else to be doing the running around after them.

They will probably give you cardiac exercises... do them. This will aid recovery.

I find it's quite normal for patients to then feel well after a few weeks but then to have a bit of a dip again and it's normally when they start doing too much too soon.

Pain relief wise - keep topped up with what they give you. But remember codeine based medication which is common after this op can give you bad constipation and then a whole load of that kind of pain. So laxatives are your friend if you are given this.

Best of luck with everything x

Absa thanks for the advice. I’ve been given much the same from doctors/nurses I’ve seen pre-op. Hard to imagine how it’ll all work out but I guess it’ll have to! I am likely a prime candidate for doing too much too soon as I’m generally very active and hate not being the one running around. Sounds like that’s about to change! I am fortunate to have good support at home though so I’m hopefully things will go as smoothly as possible.

@MadScientist10 how'd you get on?

@Absa I got cancelled in rather dramatic fashion and am booked in again for next week. Rather a disaster at home with my DH arranging time off and child care cover but there we are. At least we had a dry run!

🤞 this time for you xxx

Thank you! Fingers crossed it goes ahead and is a repair rather than a replacement!!