One of my favorite things to do when I travel to Monterrey is eat "Cabrito" the local and regional dish. Whether I have it at the "fancy" restaurant like the "El Rey Del Cabrito," or at the city market, "El Mercado Juarez" It is always delicious and I can never have enough. Cabrito has been a regional dish in Northern Mexico for over 420 years. It is a kid (young goat) still milking and usually less than 45 days old. The original dish was probably brought over from Spain but it has evolved in the northern regions of Mexico to a culinary specialty. Cabrito al Pastor is grilled over charcoal and prepared by splitting the chest and pacing it on a steel spit so it can be placed over the coals.
It is the splitting of the chest that has brought me to this analogy. Although the kid has been butchered and cleaned by the time the "Splitting" of the chest occurred, but I can just imagine what the cabrito must feel like when that happened. In fact, I cannot say that I "know the feeling" of having my chest cut opened and spread since I was under anesthesia when all that happened, but I can tell you how it feels after the procedure. Poor cabrito, I'm glad he was dead when his chest was split.
My body has been a natural generator of bad cholesterol all my life, influenced by an almost uncontrolled consumption of delicious food (food with lots of grease) and a hereditary trait of the Garza family to heart problems, my destiny to have clogged heart arteries was sealed. Unfortunately I was somewhat asymptomatic to this heart condition and it took a bit of effort to find the problem. fortunately the clogged arteries were serendipitously discovered during a routine test to look into other symptoms.
After two heart catheterization, where they went through the arteries in my arm to monitor and explore the situation of the heart, and a stress test on each individual arteries - apparently a fists in medical testing - it was determined that at least one of the arteries was over 90% blocked and the other three were blocked 70% to 80%. After a conference of five cardiologists and surgeons, it was decided that because of the unique pattern of the branching of the arteries and the location of the clogs, the artery with the most severe blocking could not be corrected with stents and at least one bypass had to be performed. I agreed and surgery was scheduled for July 9th 2020.
I registered at the hospital at 6:00 a.m. on the 9th of July. My clothes were taken and I was given this gown that completely exposed my backside and a nurse came in to shave the whole front of the body, including my "private" parts and put an IV in my right hand for Intravenous therapy to deliver fluids directly into a vein. They asked me questions that seems to be directed at making sure I knew who I was, where I was and why I was there. After a while they rolled me into the surgical prep room. There were several other people there awaiting surgery and I got to overhear some of the conversations and concerns of the other people ready to go under the knife. At this point I still felt that I could still get up and run away from this place, but it was either facing a 40% chance of surviving a massive heart attack or a 98% chance of surviving the heart surgery. I'm not a gambling man, but the odds of surviving a heart attack were not in my favor, so I stayed on the gurney.
While in the pre-surgical prep room I was visited by the anesthesiologist . He asked me some questions about allergic reactions, but his main point was that he was going to make certain I felt nothing. A couple of nursed were attending me and I made sure that they covered my legs and feet with warm blankets to avoid the cramps and the "restless leg" syndrome I get when my legs get cold. I also had a "wild toe nail" that I asked them to clip and they did. They told me hey would put two or three more IVs in my hands and one in my neck and a direct arterial tap in my wrist. They started to tell me about the drainage tubes they would place after the surgery and several other things, but the elevated readings of the monitor indicated that I was getting stressed and she told me "I'm going to give you something to relax." That is the last thing I remembered that morning until about 6:00 p.m. when I remember someone saying : "He seems to be coming out, let's prepare to remove the tubes." I went back under and the next thing I remembered , about 12 hours after the first nurse told me "I'm going to give you something to relax," were two nursed trying to take my vital signs and drawing blood.
I had three drain tube coming out of my chest, two IVs in my right hand, Two on my left hand and one in my neck with fluids dripping into at least on and possibly two of the IVs. Throughout the evening and the following day they kept injecting medication into some f the IVs in my hands and in my neck. I also had an arterial tap in my right wrist. But, to me, the most practical thing was the catheter to drain the urine, that is one of the best medical tools invented, although taking it out a couple of days later was the most uncomfortable and disgusting things ever to be done to me.
The following day they took out the second drain tube. This was buried deeper and yanking it out was a little more distressing that taking out the tube near my heart. However, the minute it was taken out the pain in the back of my rib cage disappeared - I could move, sit, up walk and bend over without any pain. During this whole time I was given oxygen through my nose to keep the oxygen level in my blood above 90. The rate (or possibly the quantity) of oxygen was slowly reduced from a 16 to a 2 over a five day period and my blood oxygenation stayed at about 95. The doctor said I could be released on the sixth day and on the fifth, the nurses began to take off the IVs in my hands and neck and remove the arterial access port on my right hand. That was liberating. Also, I had been bathing every day for the last couple of days and felt almost human. The last criteria I had to meet before being released is to have a bowl movement.
Now, knowing that I would not eat well for a while, I had some hardy meals the day before the surgery. That proved to be a questionable decision. For six days, all that food slowly moved through my intestine, hardening and possibly fossilizing a bit on its way to being "discharged." Needless to say, it was a massive amount of body waste acting like a cork in a vintage bottle of wine. My job was to extract that cork using only gravity and other natural movements since I could not "push" or have any stressful contractions. Adapting the "think" technique that Harold Hill (Robert Preston) in the movie the "Music Man" used to teach music - the "think System," I began to concentrate all my will power to the task at hand. Forty five minutes of concentration began to show results with very slow movement. I was on the verge of success , when the Doctor came into my room as part of his rounds and called my name. Instantly all the concentration was lost and the progress that was made retracted. It was very disappointing! After another forty minutes of more intense concentration, some rhythmic body motion accompanied by some minor pain, I met the final criteria for being discharged from the hospital - a somewhat disgusting but very satisfying sight to see.
Just before the time I began to apply the "think system," it was decided that I still had too much water in my body; my hands and feet were a little swollen. I was given some drug to extract it. For the next 24 hours I had to measure my urine. I measured almost two liters of pee. in that 24 hour period.
The following morning, all my discharge paperwork was completed and signed before 9:00 a.m. I was dressed and ready to go. Unfortunately, the rules are I had to be taken out in a wheel chair. But the transportation people responsible for wheeling me out where nowhere to be found. I began to complain after over an hour of sitting in the room. Finally, around 11:00 a.m., a technician found a wheel chair, without one arm rest or foot rests, and wheeled me out to the front door.
Interesting story. glad you made it through.
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