He's Back!

The best photo so far:

Harrison and Dr Rigby in the recovery room. 

This photograph was taken about half an hour after the procedure had finished. Dr Rigby came to see Harrison and to let us know that the procedure went like a dream!  He was delighted that there were no complications and Harrison remained stable throughout. He surprised everyone by finishing an hour and a half early! Bernard and I got the call whilst we were driving around Chelsea looking for a new car parking space. Harrison spent about an hour and a half in recovery before returning to his room.

Whilst Harrison was in the cath lab Bernard and I wandered down the Kings Road in a zombie like fashion. Even though I was looking, I couldn't tell you what was being displayed in any of the shop windows. We had to remain slightly aware of our surroundings as we had to dodge numerous orange blobs from Centrepoint jumping out and dancing around in front of us.  We were NOT in the mood to have a chat with them today!

We barely spoke to each other until we sat down with our lunch in the Peter Jones restaurant.  Even then the conversation was interrupted with us checking our phones for any missed calls or messages from the hospital. 

After lunch, we ambled around the back streets of Sloane Square heading in the general direction of the hospital. I suddenly realised that we should have moved the car twenty minutes previously! Cue rapid walking back to the car searching for any vacant spaces en route and hoping that we beat the traffic warden! Thankfully we did but finding that space seemed to be more difficult than replacing a pulmonary valve today! Bernard dropped me off at the hospital so that I could be with Harrison whilst he continued the game of hunt the space.

Harrison had obviously been reading the medical textbooks closely because he was recovering very well ;-)  He just had the usual equipment - ecg, blood pressure cuff and saturation monitor along with this contraption on the wound site (he wanted me to photograph it to show you):

As the time went on he became more chatty and fussy about all the lines and plasters.  Despite everyone telling him to rest, Harrison said he couldn't because "the sleepyness has all gone" the anaesthetist had done such a good job reversing the anaesthetic! We've now got a problem keeping him lying flat for 4 hours. Nice problem to have though!

Compared to October this is a brilliant recovery, so fingers crossed it continues. I'm quite optimistic because his colour and numbers look very good. The plan for tomorrow is for a chest x-ray, echocardiogram and the blood tests for the immunologist.

A huge thank you to everybody for your lovely messages and emails. We all really appreciate you thinking about Harrison.