Poetlaurehate

Oh shit, I've had this! Two times, baby!

I have Marfan's syndrome, which resulted in aortic dissection. Got med-flighted and everything to get the ascending taken care of. Very rough experience, especially when I had to get the descending replaced a couple months later. Went through this exact stuff though, the cooling, the "bloodless field," which is what they call it when they pump out all of your blood to work on your heart (and which I think is a particularly evocative phrase).

You'll be alright, bro. The hospital stay will suck -- boring as hell, painful, food sucks. You'll likely have tubes snaked into in various spots, literally packed into your abdomen, making it hard to roll around much. Try to sleep as much as possible, and if you start feeling a little hinkey or seeing things, tell somebody and tell them a lot. ICU delirium is very common, but very easy to get a handle on.

And most importantly, trust the hospital staff. Doctors and nurses are going to be coming in to do gross, uncomfortable shit to you. It'll get to be sort of rapid fire after a while -- every time someone walks into the room you'll be wondering what new thing they'll be subjecting you to. Getting the hair-thin wires of an external pacemaker removed from around your heart is by far one of the strangest, most uncomfortable feelings I've ever experienced.

But remember! That's all it is. Discomfort. You're going to be fine. Uncomfortable for a bit, but fine. These people know what they're doing, it's fairly ho-hum for them, and they're not going to let anything bad happen to you. Excelsior, brother. Feel free to talk at me if you have any other questions. Fucking reverse AMA!

Oh, also, where are you getting it done?

Edit: obligatory "thanks for the gold" edit! Not that I really deserve it. All I did was not die.

Glad I could help. The time'll plod, but it'll pass like it always does. And you'll have a cool scar. Though judging by the top comment, you don't seem to have any troubles with the ladies.

Tesseract, please.

Aw hell. Yeah, I didn't sleep for many, many days. That coupled with the anesthesia, the trauma, etc., resulted in me starting to hallucinate almost immediately. At first I was aware of what was going on, but then I had a fullblown psychotic breakdown. I started running around the ward, up and down stairwells, that sort of thing. I eventually found my way to the front entrance of MGH and made it outside and down a few blocks.

Thing was, security couldn't just tackle me because of the surgical incision. They cut your sternum open and staple it back together, but it's very tenuous for weeks and weeks. My surgeon's assistance was frantically telling the security guards not to touch me out of fear that I'd fall or something and fuck the incision up.

Mind you, I remember very little of this, but it must've been a sight.

That bit about the ICU delirium. I had a full-on psychotic break and actually managed to escape MGH and get a couple blocks away. That's a whole other story.

But seriously, make sure he's getting enough sleep. It's very difficult to sleep in the cardiac stepdown what with all the beeping and disturbances. Other than that, trust the hospital staff! Like I said, it's icky and scary and embarrassing, and you can feel like you'll never be whole again, but you will be, and they've got it on lockdown.