Chapter 2: Lessons Learned

Read Chapter 1: First Signs of Heart Disease Here

Coughing hurts — a lot. Sneezing is worse.

That’s probably the most important lesson I learned in the first few weeks after returning home from open-heart surgery. The thing is, there isn’t much you can do about it. You just hold on, grab a pillow if you have one close, and get through it. At the hospital they gave me a heart-shaped pillow with a silk screen of a real heart on it. My doctor sketched in my bypasses so I could show others. An amusing memento, but also one with some utility.

The second thing I had to learn was how to slow it down and take it easy. Recovering from open-heart surgery takes months — if not the better part of a year. I expect to be mostly back to normal after about four, once cardiac rehab is finished, but I’ve been told by a number of people who have been through this that it will take longer than I expect. I believe them.

Even before I left the hospital, I knew one of my goals was going to be returning to dive status. This summer. Not at some point. Or eventually. But as soon as possible. To do that, I would have to get in better-than-average shape and pass a stress test at a higher level than would be expected of your “average” diver. They want to make sure you have the capacity to respond underwater, should you get hit with an unexpected current or something like that. I’ll talk more about this later, but one of the standard recommendations for fitness to dive after heart surgery is Stage 4 on the Bruce Protocol. Stage 4 ends with the treadmill at 4.2 miles per hour at 16 percent incline. Piece of cake…

As I checked out of the hospital, a person from the cardiac rehab came to see me. She encouraged me to sign up, which I intended to do, and then set me up with a home exercise plan until I was ready to begin rehab. I scoffed when she told me to start out with two or three six-minute walks on the treadmill. I made it a point to get started the day after I came home. Two six minute walks were about all I could do. I took a nap between them.

As I wrap up my first month home post-surgery, I’m happy to say that I am logging nearly two miles a day on the treadmill. And still have energy for more. I have been on the treadmill every day. No breaks. No taking off because I don’t feel like it. If I’m going to meet my goal and return to dive status, I have to take this entire process seriously. That’s not to say that I don’t still take naps, though.

A very real side-effect of having lived through open-heart surgery (I will assume the same is true for anyone who has been through a heart attack or received stents) is a healthy dose of paranoia. I’m not talking about imagining people following you down the street or anything like that. I mean constantly listening to your body and getting antsy with anything that even vaguely resembles chest pain or another symptom of heart disease.

A few weeks after coming home from the hospital, I found myself back in the emergency room. I had pain and discomfort in my chest and shortness of breath. My imagination told me something had gone wrong with my bypasses and they were going to have to open me back up. After every imaginable test on my heart, they determined everything was great. In fact, my heart was functioning at the top of the normal range. I had a viral infection in my lungs that was threatening to turn into pneumonia. Because of my recent surgery and vaguely heart-sounding symptoms — tightness in my chest, shortness of breath — I bought myself another night in the hospital. The upside? I felt a tremendous weight lifted off of my shoulders when they told me it wasn’t my heart. (Funny that pneumonia can sound like a positive diagnoses.) No one even suggested that I had overreacted, either. They take even the slightest hint of a heart problem as serious.

My next step, and my subject for next month, will be cardiac rehab. I’ll be exercising at the hospital three times a week while wearing a heart monitor. I’m looking forward to it because exercising while supervised and monitored will give me the freedom to push things a bit. I’ve been a little nervous about overextending my limits at home without knowing exactly what they are. The last thing I want to do is push myself just a bit too far and end up back in the hospital, or worse.

And if I want to ace that Bruce protocol stress test and get back in the water, I am going to have to push myself.

Read the Full Series Here

Author’s Note:

Since 2009, I’ve written the Lessons for Life column for Scuba Diving magazine providing analysis of scuba diving accidents so others can learn from them — and hopefully avoid being in the same situation.

In the ultimate Lessons for Life, I invite you to follow along as I write about my personal experience with coronary artery disease, open heart surgery and the recovery process over the next few months.

Eric Douglas co-authored the book Scuba Diving Safety and has written a series of adventure novels, children’s books and short stories — all with an ocean and scuba diving theme. Follow him on Facebook or check out his website at booksbyeric.com