Jesse's New Heart

For those of you that didnt know, our beloved Jesse Garcia had to have a second Open Heart surgery on August 1st 2016.  After spending 5 weeks in the hospital trying to resolve the issue with Antiotics, the infection came back agressively and therefore had to have the surgery immediately.   Because Jesse was has been out of work for 2 months and will be out during his recovery we have decided to start a GoFundMe page.  Please join me in help Jesse fully heal his amazing heart.  LOVE & LIGHT!!!  (please read Jesse's blog update below).

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

August 10th - Week 7 Update Well another week gone by and sorry for my absence. There was no news to report for week five except that I was starting to get totally bored! I was starting to get stir crazy so I just read and tried to focus on logistics of finances having not worked for since June 10. I’m not worried at all about that as I know having been through this before that God, and the help of my friends will help me get through this.

It all seemed to being going well as I was being assessed to be able to finish out week 6 of IV antibiotics at home, but then I suddenly had an episode on Saturday night with severe pain in my abdomen and head just as I had experienced 7 weeks prior in Grass Valley when I had to be taken to the emergency room there. I was taken to have an CAT Scan right away and they found an aneurysm had developed near the infection site and it posed a danger of rupturing so they schedule me for surgery as soon as my surgeon was prepared to move forward so we planned for Monday morning August 1. As much as I had hoped to avoid surgery, the main goal of spending all this time in the hospital was to get my body in optimal health and that I was. Sunday was spent resting as I was already taking heavy pain medication and the IV protocol.

Close friends and family visited me that Sunday but I wasn’t much of a host as I mostly slept. This was all just surreal going through the whole open-heart surgery once again. But prepared I was! I just kept saying my prayers and mantras to continue the healing energy for my body and my mind. I have to say that the mental preparation could not be any more important than the physical preparation! It was going to be a test of strength to be sure. I was rolled into the operating room at 7:30AM. What is usually a 5-hour aortic valve replacement and ascending aorta repair operation ended up being an 11-hour event. All in all it was a successful operation and my Doctor was very pleased with the results. Apparently the 11-hour operation was because of the aggressive strain of staph bacteria and the location of the infection that my cardiac surgeon had to make sure that all of the infection was completely removed. What that entailed was basically replacing the infected parts of my heart and plumbing and then irrigating my entire exposed organ system within my chest cavity with antibiotics to make sure that all of the infection was cleared.

When I woke up in the ICU it was 11:30 PM. I knew I was in the hospital, I knew I’d had open-heart surgery, I knew that the real test was just beginning, recovery! I was still on ventilation when I woke up so the time had come for the breathing tube to be removed from my throat and when doing so the nurses urged me to breathe. But I couldn’t breathe for the mucous had accumulated at the bottom of the entry way to my trachea. They kept urging me to “Breathe, breathe, breathe, just breather”. I felt like I was downing. They started to lie me back down into my bed. It only made it worse. At that moment I could imagine what my brother Joe must have felt with pulmonary fibrosis. I began to panic. I grabbed the arm of the attending nurse and had him stop lying me back. You’ve got to breathe they’d say. I motioned that I couldn’t breathe.

The time was ticking and I knew it. “How long could I hold my breath”, I wondered. I motioned again that I couldn’t breathe. I tried to talk, “Suction”. “What?”, the nurse asked. I made my self keep calm because if I didn’t I new I could die. I pulled it together and was barely able to udder the words to the male nurse, “I need suction”. They gave me the suction tube and put it into the back of my throat and coughed as best I could and a rush mucous cleared my throat. I began to breathe calmly. I don’t know that I have ever been through anything so scary in all my life!

Now comes the pain, my ribs felt like someone had sucker punched me a thousand times on each side plus being hit by a truck compounded with the trauma of already dealing with the infection in my body for the past 8 weeks prior to surgery date. They’d given me what they thought was a heavy dose of pain medications. I knew that I should have emphasized more clearly to the anesthesiologist before hand that I had a high tolerance to pain medication and to not hold back. I had to fight tooth and nail with my stone cold ICU nurse to get the high dosages of pain medication. It told her that each patient should be looked at as individuals and not regular textbook scenarios.

Ugh, here we go again having to explain myself. It took 12 hours to get the pain to a manageable level. For the next 2 days they gradually increased the levels of pain medications so that they were in “therapeutic range”. So by Wednesday I started to get relief and being heavily medicated I was able to get some sleep at night but then by Thursday evening I started to difficulty sleeping for any stretch of time beyond an hour. This made me realize that I was on track to recovery, as my normal reaction is not having a normal sleep pattern.

The adventure continues. First of all I had been moved to 3 different rooms in the past week and I was getting a little disorientated. First I had my own room in the ICU for 2 days, and then I was moved to a shared room in ECCU, Extended Cardiac Care Unit. I had a roommate who was mad at the world. He must have been because he kept yelling at everyone who would come into the room. Fortunately for me my hearing really sucks, and I was exhausted, so it seemed easy to tune him out but it also took my meditation focus to the next level of consciousness. I had to block out the outside world to really focus on myself.

It was a challenge I was up to but I still asked the nurse if I could have a private room, which I ended up getting the next day, day 5. So I was moved to the opposite side of the hospital wing and was put into a room that must have been an afterthought when putting it together because it was so tight to maneuver around with my IV pole, which went with me everywhere I had to go, but it didn’t matter I was a private room. All the while that I’ve been in the hospital orders were that I take walks periodically throughout the day, as this seems to be a prerequisite to being discharge from the hospital they want to make sure that you can manage under you own control. In the ICU I walked the day after surgery and again the second day.

I was a walking fool, as I wanted to get better and feel ready for discharge from the hospital on day 10. Back to day 5, Friday, I got a private room. I’d taken three walks already and kept getting turned around. I had visitor that day and even they got confused on which way was what. At one point I ended up walking into my old room where someone was lying in the bed. Awkward! Now that I was feeling more in control of the pain and getting back to myself my old pattern of sleeplessness I asked for sleep aid. Ambien or trazadone was all they had to offer in the hospital. I chose the Ambien, which apparently made me a bit loopy. My nurse was giving me my nighttime dose of medications and I was making light with my nurse as we went for my walk. She didn’t seem amused and was already looking at me suspiciously. She was a very good nurse making sure I had everything I needed to assure I was comfortable.

It came time for my last walk of the day. I was blabbing away with my nurse on my Ambien high and she would answer my questions which I assume maybe were too silly by the look on her face. We turned a corner and as I was feeling that I had enough of a walk I asked the wrong question, “Where are we going?” “Well we just pasted your room” she said. I relied, “I got so confused.” “You’re confused? It’s not good that you’re confused!” I was in trouble. I explained that I got turned around earlier that day when I was walking a visitor to the guest elevator. She wasn’t buying it. She really was worried. Around midnight I was told I that I was being moved immediately to a different room. I asked why but they wouldn’t say. I really didn’t care at that point as I was in la la land. I got up to help pack up my things as I had actually moved into the hospital with food, books, computer, iPad, and other things that made my 6 weeks stay more comfortable. “All you need to do is to stay in your bed”, my nurse told me. I had no control of what was happening. It really made me uncomfortable as I felt like I was being treated like I was going to hurt someone because all because I had taken Ambien.

She kept asking me if I was okay. She actually ended up staying in my room keeping watch over me the whole night through. I got a bit creeped out! When I asked the next morning after shift change I was told that it was because of concern of me falling during the night. I have to admit that I was talking to people who weren’t there. I had my eyes closed and could see people in my room, friends mostly, and would have conversations with them but then when I opened my eyes the room was empty. Needless to say it took a couple days to get the Ambien out of my system as I was still talking to people in my lucid sleep only to open my eyes and no one was in my room. Freaky!

I’m feeling better and am scheduled to be discharged today, Wednesday August 10. It has been a rollercoaster of a health ride to say the least! My doctor reminded me of how dire the situation was when I arrived at the hospital 7 weeks ago and that’s not to mention the two weeks before that when it all started. It was like being in a truck accident, which put it all in perspective. Why don’t they tell you this before the operation? Well I guess if someone can imagine being hit by a truck and how intense the recovery process was going to be they might not go through with the operation! I have to say thanks again for all the prayers, positive vibes, positive energy, words of comfort and just being there for support.

Thanks for those of you who were able to come to visit me in the hospital breaking up the monotony of monotony, for those gifts of food, chocolates, deserts, and magazines. It all helped, believe me! I’ll update you again as I settle back to being in my own home again! I know that with continued prayers I will be back doing things that I love, like writing and coloring, and creating workout programs for my clients! In the meantime wishes for good health to all of you and continued Love, Light, Peace, and Harmony to each and every one of you near and far. God bless you always! XOXO, Jesse