Chapter 13. Not having appetite in IWS room

Initially I was very happy to be moved from ICU to the Post Ops treatment room which was also called IWS (Intermediate Ward-Surgical). Maybe happy wasn’t the right word, the more appropriate might be “proud”, Proud to have graduated from the ICU and “upgrading” to enter the IWS. I was placed in a bed which was away from the door, which was usually called “patient number 9″ by the nurses in this IWS room…

I noted, just like its name, Intermediate Ward-Surgical, the patients in this room were they who had just undergone surgery. There were by-pass patients (CABG, Cardiac Artery Bypass Graft), heart valve correction patients, or me, the patient who was labeled as a Bentall procedure patient. Since all the patients were just discharged by open-heart surgery, I saw that there was a blood and body fluid flowing monitor next to each patient. Not only that, each patient’s heart and thumb were monitored by a kind of monitor which its screen was small with different colored lights in it. Some monitors sounded… tuut… tuut… tuut… that was typical, which I thought sometimes It sounded melodic but when it came to sleeping time, it was quite disturbing. Generally, a sounded monitor meant there was “something” with the monitored patient so the nurse would quickly come to bed which its monitor beeping. Usually the nurse would turn off the sound immediately, and the room would be silent again. There sounded only the long breath of the patients or the moan of some patients (The patient next to me who came from Lampung often whined when his wife came to visit, but at the other times if his wife didn’t come, the patient would be silent…)

I noticed that some by-pass patients, moreover they who had already had other diseases such as hypertension or kidney dysfunction, would have difficulty in this IWS room. Some patients had persistent cough because there was a thickened mucus in their lungs and they usually should be heated first so that they could be relax and go to sleep. However it didn’t happen to the heart valve or Bentall procedure surgery patients as me…

Chapter 12. Graduated from the ICU room, transfered into Intermediate IWS room

The Requirement for a patient to pass the ICU room is quite hard. As it’s known, after undergoing the cardiac surgery, the heart would swell and blow a lot of blood and other body fluids. Therefore, any cardiac surgery patients’ body in the ICU room would be “holed” in some place.

For me personally who underwent Bentall procedure surgery, there were 10 holes, 2 channels and 1 incision. All the ten hole are: 3 holes in my left neck, 3 holes in the right neck, 3 holes in the abdomen (above the diaphragm, so it was still around my chest cavity), and 1 hole in the left thigh (supposedly this hole was the most dangerous one, and if I’m not mistaken it is named ABB – perhaps an abbreviation of Arteri Besar Berbahaya (The Dangerous Great Artery)… hahaha). One of the channels was the respiratory channel which its diameter was 1 cm, inserted in my mouth to my chest, aimed to reduce the shortness of breath which might descend to a cardiac surgery patient who was just operated. The other channel is the “jumper”, as a tool for me to pee which was given a kind of pipe which would flow to a kind of plastic bag – the function was to ease the patient when he wants to pee he doesn’t need to get down from bed.

The last, my incision extended along 22.5 cm that was once used to open the chest cavity from the chest that was below the neck (but it was still below the top button of a guy’s shirt – so the operation trace couldn’t not be seen when we wear a shirt) to 5 cm above the diaphragm.

Perhatian : Mahasiswa S1 Inteligensia Semu kelas 04PKT dan 04PTT

Dear para mahasiswa S1 kelas “Inteligensia Semu” yang saya ajar yaitu kelas 04PKT dan 04PTT, silahkan mengklik link di bawah ini sebagai bahan belajar mempersiapkan UAS Inteligensia Semu nanti.

Yang anda harus download ada 6 files yaitu : file1, file2, file3, file4, file5 dan file6.

Be there or be square !

Chapter 11. The first consciousness and getting hallucination

As I said in the previous chapter, in fact I totally didn’t know what happened during my surgery. Never mind that, my last consciousness was when an anesthesiologist injected something in my right arm and then after a short talk, I fell asleep so soundly…

As while I wasn’t conscious I didn’t know what happened to me, I just relied on the stories told by my relatives, friends, and students to “reconstruct” the story of what really happened to me at that time.

[Picture : when I was in ICU and can eat for the first time..]

When I was treated in the ICU of Harapan Kita Heart Hospital

Whether there was a bloody bleeding after my surgery – supposedly up to 3 times I got severe bleeding – I only heard it from people. Thus I was surprised and didn’t know what it meant when one of my students sent an SMS, “Sir, I saw you in the ICU, but you haven’t been conscious…” I didn’t know what he meant, although I initially thought that this student, whose uncle’s surgery date was close to mine, was visiting his uncle in the ICU. In fact, what happened was many of my students from Binus – including other students that I didn’t know – came to Harapan Kita Heart Hospital to donate their blood to me – both fresh blood and frozen blood.