By Barry Miller, November 27, 2019 — On the morning of April 25th, 2016, I was on my way to the hospital to have a catheterization for a heart procedure and I was looking forward to coming home the following day. When the cardiologist started the procedure all my arteries closed and my heart collapsed, prompting a quadruple heart bypass surgery. During the procedure, they asked me if I had pain in my chest and I could barely speak and that’s when I knew something was wrong. They had to take a vein out of my leg to put at my heart, and I got the scars to prove it. At that point, the cardiologist came out to my wife and told her the procedure was a complicated procedure and I had a 50% chance of dying. They told her to call all the family in because it was a 50/50 procedure. But hear I am today, living a relatively normal life and no complications.
When I woke up, I had tubes and all kinds of IVs, and I didn’t wake up for a day after the surgery. My family tells me that I was incoherent for a couple of days. [My daughter] said that I wrote on her hand that I wanted ice because my throat was very dry, but I could not speak. I remember everybody coming in to see me, even extended family, like my aunts and uncles. My wife and daughter and [grandchildren] came in mostly every day. When I got tired of everybody in the room, [my daughter] said I would say, “It’s time for you to go home now.” I guess I also asked for [my son-in-law] to ask if he was mowing the property, I don’t really remember any of this though. All the nurses were very nice and the first day I had to have a nurse in the room at all times. The healing processes took months, I was only able to sit in my chair and I had to sleep in my chair sitting up. The good thing was I got a new recliner out of all of this. Everybody wanted me to be comfortable. Even though I had to sit in the chair all the time I was glad to be home. It was a long recovery and I was still a little confused for a while. Even when I was at home everybody would still visit me during the recovery process. Today I am still limited with stuff that I can do and stuff that I want to do.