Very slow recovery after CABG

My husband had a double bypass Oct. 10. He didn't have a heart attack and had no damage to his heart at all. He entered the hospital after experiencing shortness of breath with very little exertion. He is 53 and has always taken good care of himself, but heart problems are in his family.

Since surgery, he's had all kinds of problems. It started with low blood pressure (the docs had a hard time getting it high enough post-op) which caused problems with recovery since it caused him to get dizzy and almost black out every time he got up.

8 weeks later, he still has no energy. When he went for a stress test about 3 weeks ago, he had to stop after about 2 minutes. His heart rate/pulse/blood pressure remained normal, not rising at all. But, he was out of breath and couldn't keep up.

He's scheduled for an echo in January, with a follow-up in February, but his family doc suggested he may have leaky valves or nerve damage from the surgery.

I was wondering if anybody here has experienced the same symptoms or could shed some light??

Thanks

has he been checked for anemia?

how is it going now? my recovery from single bypass, off-pump, has been even more grueling and slow. I am 16 weeks from surgery and Ive only resumed a 2-hr a day work schedule. I need the evenings and weekends to rest up. I have constant low grade fevers in the afternoon, into the evening and then I have night sweats. The fevers and night sweats only subsided for 3 weeks while i was being treated with massive antibiotics for pneumonia. I have had my left lung drained twice (thoracentis).
I am getting the run around from my three docs, the PCP, the cardiologist, the lung surgeon. They are pre plexed at the fevers to the point that they are shrugging their shoulders.
Im 50yr female. I do have a major medical history of radiation of chest for Hodgkins. Still, with this info, I am not getting guesses, let alone answers.

Let me know your progress by now

It's now 9 months later.

It appears that most of his problems were drug related. The beta-blockers were keeping his blood pressure too low so he was almost passing out. Because of this, he was unable to resume physical activity for quite a while. That has improved.

He then switched from Crestor after seeing an ad on TV indicating a major side-effect is aching and pains in the muscles, which he had. He is taking Lipitor now and it doesn't seem to affect him the same way. He was in such pain at one point, that I took him to the hospital and they gave him massive doses of ibuprofin which almost caused ulcers in his stomach.

He has gone back to work. However, one issue he still has is how winded/light headed he gets when going uphill/upstairs. His doctor thinks it's stress and in his head and keeps offering him "happy pills".

He is switching to a new cardiologist and we're hoping to get answers to that issue from him. We also hope to find out what the prognosis is for him regarding the 2 blockages they didn't fix.

I hope you feel better soon, or at least get some answers!

"His doctor thinks it's stress and in his head and keeps offering him "happy pills"."



I am glad you are changing doctors. This is not sound advise coming from a doctor.

I also glad things have improved that much for him. What I notice though is that it was he himself that initiated the changes (in medicines). Makes one wonder what use are doctors....

Trust me, this has opened our eyes to the way the medical profession really works! Neither of us had needed much medical care before this.

You really do have to take control of your own medical treatment.

It is sad though, isn't it? Once looked upon as being a "noble" profession (helping heal other people) it has been slurred into the commercial scene and lost much of what it intended to be

I understand months have passed since your husbands operation but I am 48 and had a similar experience post-op. The team could not get my BP up, they finally had to intervene w/ high doses of hydrocortisone injected into the blood stream.

My symptoms were the same tiredness fatigue, lightheadedness. Turns out they tested me a month or so out of the hospital and the tests showed my adrenal glands were not producing enough cortisol.

I have since been diagnosed w/ secondary hypoadrenalism. We will never know if the damage to my adrenal glands happened during surgery or if I have had this all along.

Hi there to anyone reading this especially JakeB2003.

It is 14 years since my heart attack and almost 4 years since I had my triple bypass. Although I also had mild problems with BP medication, I found out altogether too late that most of my problems were being caused by Simvastatin which was to lower cholesterol and lessen the risk of blocked arteries etc!

To cut a long story short, Statins "Crestor, Lipitor and Simvastatin etc" were the reason and still are to this day for fatigue, muscular and joint pain plus memory problems.

Please google Statin side efects or Statin adverse reactions etc, I wish I had known about the problems before it was too late. Needless to say that most doctors are still not accepting that these modern miracles can do any harm, if only they would see what is in front of their very eyes.

I stopped taking Simvastatin 2 1/2 years ago but the damage was already done, Pleas do look into the side effects, they are not as rare as you will be lead to believe. Some peoples problems will go away when they stop taking them but others may take longer or stay with them if you are one of the many unfortunate ones.

sternal wire broke and was repaired but a piece of the wire was left lodgec behind my heart.how serious is this?

Royland I definitely think you should be kept under doctor's observation. I don't think it's dangerous but it could cause problems.

I was just 58. I had CABG (double bypass) with a blocked left main. There was no feeling worse than lying on the angiogram table being told "You need emergency bypass surgery ... If you don't have it, you're going to die tonight" That was after 2 heart attacks that day, and both presented atypically ... no shortness of breath, no pains in odd places ... just felt like I'd been hit with the butt end of a baseball bat and it passed in a few moments. But OH did it hurt.

Anyway, suffice it to say they did a great job, but it took about a year to start to really feel like I was recovered.

I felt very little pain in my chest post surgery ... mostly discomfort. The wound healed pretty well, but I ended up with a keloid type spot right in the middle that itches like crazy.

The major pain was my leg ... they managed to damage some nerves and it caused major leg lock up and electro-shocks for a few weeks. Now, the nerves have repaired themselves sort of ... but short circuited so I can touch my knee and feel it in 3 places!!!

For the first year, I took a beta blocker day and night ... it slowed my heart to about 58-62 bpm. That meant by the time supper was done, I couldn't stay up and about ... I was a bed potato in the evenings! My GP agreed that a reduction of the beta blocker by 50% was a good idea ... while I still have a slow heart, I can keep going to about 9 pm .. which gives me about a 12 hour "up" day. I have been able to keep going to 11 or 12 to watch TV etc. Just can't stay vertical ... too tiring.

My BP is about 120/60 now ... It's hard work to get a lot higher! So the Altace is doing its stuff OK.

I was taking Lipitor 80 mg ... mean stuff. I was suffering muscle soreness ... not the pain that some complain of ... so not too much damage was being done. My urine was always dark. Doctor wanted me to try Crestor 20 ... within a few days my muscles really hurt. So,I went back to Lipitor but 40mg ... now I don't notice muscle pain, my urine is normal ... and things aren't slipping my mind as much. Moreover my liver ALT enzyme test is now in the normal range and not elevated like before.

So now I'm starting to feel closer to human ... I'd lost a lot of upper body strength. Lower wasn't too bad becaue that's where most of my rehab exercise focused. Upper body exercise is helping ... I got mine finishing shingling my roof!

I get twinges ... minor pains still in my chest wall ... supposedly due to scar tissue and things settling in place. One symptom I particularly noticed up to a year is that walking on hard surfaces without soft soled shoes would jar my chest ... originally it felt "loose inside" ... and make me feel weird. Nothing cardiac ... all related to chest damage where they crack you open!

So, yeah, it takes time. Fatigue is often the beta blocker ... and watch the cholesterol meds ... if you can get them lowered do so!

hi,
you are right. you do have to do your own research on what these meds are capable of doing.
Doctors don't seem to care, or are too busy with making money to read the literature or check their own records. Also, they make too much money from the Pharma. companies to change things.
I have had to watch all my doctors over the years. I would have been dead long ago if I had listened to and followed the doctors instructions without doing my own research on many of these drugs and their interactions.
I am currently loosing my job, on oxygen almost 24/7 because of problems with my CABG and meds taken since. I just learned that my doc kept raising my dosages of Statins. I have not been right since my CABG (2yrs.ago). I have been having shortness of breath and lung problems since. Ten weeks ago I was working a manual labor job, then it was like my oxygen levels dropped off a cliff. Now levels are down to 70's by just shaving,showering,getting dressed.
Statins are a big problem but are not talked about because of the big money being made. (Billions).
The sad part is it is getting worse and no one has a final solution of what to do to stop the progression.
I guess it is all just a way to weed out the herd, or in other words population control by getting everyone on these drugs.

As much as big pharma are a problem, I wouldn't blame statins as the problem here. Shortness of breath is not a side effect of statins.

And I wouldn't be in a hurry to blame doctors either ... they want to do the best for their patients, and when a drug company rep comes in to tell you about a new drug and paints it in glowing terms, it's not unreasonable to try it. At the same time, as they gain experience with some drugs they become far more conservative in their prescribing.

Shortness of breath and lung problems after cabg are commonly from two problems ... excess fluid buildup in the body in general increasing your weight and in the lungs in particular, reducing their efficiency. The usual treatment is with a diuretic like Lasix. The other more common problem is a failure of the left ventricle due to the damage from heart attack or failed grafts. Heart failure usually means going onto a transplant list and hope that the doctors can keep what you've got now going long enough for your number to come up.

That your doctor has increased your level of statins implies that your lipid profile has not improved significantly which could be clogging your bypasses. Are you keeping on a low fat diet? That is absolutely critical. Cholesterol plaques can build up rapidly in the grafts if not looked after (hence increasing the statin levels).

It sounds to me like your doctor isn't telling you all that you need to know! If you've got questions, ask your doctor ... more importantly ask him to explain things in plain language.