Thursday, October 25, 2007

Bill Bailey out of hospital after 5½ weeks!

Laetitia writes:

Dad is out of hospital (got out Mon 15 Oct). He and Mum have been staying with Mum's mum for the last week or so because her bathroom was remodelled last year so there's no lip to the shower.

He has to go up to the hospital for things like rehab, chest x-ray… Some things can be done by a visiting nurse—he had his throat dressing (from the tracheostomy) changed on Monday and it is healing well—that may be the last dressing change. He had a blood test on Tuesday but they didn't have those results when I talked to Mum about him yesterday.

The lower part of his lung (left?) is still collapsed so he has to do some deep breathing exercises. He's on about 4 different drugs including Warfarin and fluid reduction tablets. His fluid reduction tablet morning dose was increased to two (from one) because his feet are swollen in the morning. I suspect this is to do with both legs having been opened to get a suitable vein for the bypass.

On the whole he is on the mend and reasonably cheery—who wouldn't be at simply being out of hospital after 5.5 weeks! :-)

[Note from Ian: For those who don't know, Laetitia's dad went into hospital on 5 September for a heart valve replacement.]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can I just ask...if they were doing a heart valve replacement, what were they doing invading legs for bypass veins?!? Heart bypass and valve replacement are two quite different operations, i really hope they knew which one they were doing! My grandmother was eighty-something (i forget now) when she had a heart valve replacement, and there were no veins taken from legs...unfortunately, she too had complications, but no mention of bypass veins...did they do a bypass or two while they were there? A quick google search will reveal the most common methods of valve replacement, none of which include taking tissue from the patient's own body.

Ian said...

Actually, apparently they did the bypass “at the same time”: not strictly as part of the valve replacement, but because of some of the damage/weakness caused by such a long time of sub-function.