After Heart Surgery|Heart Valve Replacement

After Heart Surgery – What Causes Muscle Cramping?

After heart surgery, I was sent home from the hospital on heavy diuretics, and now six weeks after my surgery, I’m still on most of them. Most open heart surgery patients are on diuretics at least for a while after their surgeries.

I’m now experiencing muscle cramps in my fingers, toes, hands, arches, arms, calves, and now in my sides below the rib cage. These symptoms are probably due to the cumulative effects of the diuretics over time.

My common sense tells me that the heart too is a muscle, so I want to check these cramps before anything weird happens. My mother suffered a stroke when her electrolytes got out of balance. The Doctors later discovered that her body would not hold sodium.

Maybe Dr. Blake needs to reduce the diuretics or give me a supplement for whatever is being stripped from my body. Could be potassium or magnesium, but I don’t think it is low sodium. I”m a salt hound!

Called Angela in the research department to ask her to contact Dr. Blake for me. She is usually the quickest avenue to Dr. Blake. Angela called back and said that Dr. Blake wanted me to get a MBP (Metabolic Blood Panel) right away.

With the same MBP lab order, she also wants to check my magnesium level. This blood work should give her the answer as to how to adjust my medicines or prescribe supplements.

Dr. Blake loves to get answers! I will be glad to get this problem solved as the little finger and outside palm on my right hand draws and cramps nearly all the time.

Because of the muscle cramping and extreme fatigue, I did not do much of anything today except drink lots of Pedialyte (Power Aide, Gatorade, Pro Aid). Rest, rest, and more rest, and that was just about it. I don’t want to over-tax my heart with all this continuing muscle cramping.

Primarily, it is up to me to weigh daily, and to notice anything new going on. It’s a little bit of trouble to get in touch with the Doctor, but I want to be safe rather than have something go wrong that could have been prevented by just plain old Doctor/Patient communication.

Why is it that we don’t want to call the Doctor? For me, it is all the hoops you have to go through before you finally get an answer.

Usually, I’d rather wait and hope the symptoms disappear on their own; however, since my open heart valve replacement surgery which turned out to be so much more, I’ve become kind of a pansy. Where my heart is concerned, I’d rather be safe than sorry.