Yikes AWAKE during Surgery!- April 5, 2013

Today I try to sleep in a bit I have been getting tube feeds nightly so I'm still getting use to being hooked up at night. It makes it interesting trying to go to washroom at night between the oxygen cord and the IV pole with the tube feed machine and the two plug ind everything gets tangled and if anyone knows after having a hysterectomy and radiation and chemotherapy near my bladder I cannot hold it very long so ya it's usually a mad dash to the washroom tripping over all the cords. Even had to leave the door open a few times. Did I mention the people on the glass elevators have a clear view to my room and bathroom. Just hoping no one is on the elevators at 3am. So maybe a bit to much info. Anyways the tube feedings are going well except I don't feell as hungry in the morning for breakfast which is my favorite meal here. I'm usually hungry by lunch,snack time,supper,more snacks, and more baked goodies and snacks from friends and family. There's no way im not gaining any weight. At 10:30 a porter for physio shows up to take me for a six minute walk test. I am thinking I don't think I'm going to be able to do a walk test bc I am still in pain from the feeding tube procedure. The Porter said well it's booked so I need to take you down. I'm thinking ok this may be a waste of time but I have not seen any of my physio friends for a few years so I'm willing to go down. When I get there there's no physiotherapists that I recognize so they say we will try the walk test and see how I do. This involves walking around a hallway and see how many laps I can do in 6 minutes. I get this test once a year and the last time I was able to do 7 laps. This time i have an oxygen bottle to pull which causes more strain on my stomach. I start the walk and am barely halfway around and I start a coughing attack which is worse on my stomach. I keep walking though I am in pain and really short of breathe the pain is actually so bad I start to cry. Another physiotherapists sees me struggling and gets me a chair right away. They hook me up to an oxygen sats monitor And my sats are 71 which is really low if you don't know about oxygen numbers. Above 90 is a good number for me but ideally 95 or above is the norm. So we rebook the walk test for Monday by then my stomach should be better. This afternoon I met with the anesthesiologist Dr Finning who was there for my transplant 12 years ago. He basically reminded me what his job was keeping me asleep and safe during the transplant. And he reminded me of the different lines that they put in during the procedure. They will put in a blood pressure line into my artery in my wrist and a catheter into my vein in my neck and I will have chest tubes, a catheter and possible more IVs depending on what is needed during procedure. Most of this I remember. He also tells me about being on a heart lung by-pass machine for the duration of the surgery. This is a machine that takes over for the heart and lungs and the blood is ran thru the machine instead of thru my heart and lungs. Then he tells me or warns me that there is a possibility that I may be awake for part of the surgery. Wait a minute AWAKE during the surgery! I guess sometimes they have to back off some of the anesthetics to see how my new organs are going to work this is usually just for a few minutes and then they give me more anesthetic. I may or may not remember this but he has to tell me about it incase I freak out and that can be dangerous. I won't be able to move or do anything just hear stuff but if this happened and I didn't know what was going on I could panic and cause my blood pressure to become unstable. I don't remember being told this before but that was 12 years ago so my memories not super good. I always said that I remember hearing music during my last transplant. I remember hearing the same song over and over so I don't know if it really happened or not. Getting excited for tomorrow and probably won't be able to sleep I get to meet the newest member of the family this weekend Hadley Ames Ballan was born March 27, 2013 while I was here so ya going to have an exciting weekend.