Valve Repair Surgery|After Open Heart Surgery

Valve Repair Surgery – Muscle Cramping After Open Heart Surgery?

Well, I’m puzzled today. For the past couple of weeks or so, I’ve had muscle cramps in my fingers, toes, arms, calf and side muscles. I think muscle cramps are fairly common post valve repair surgery.

Dr. Blake, my cardiologist, ordered a BMP to determine if I was low in sodium, magnesium, or potassium. Everything was normal except I was slightly low on sodium.

I’m thinking that muscle cramping after open heart surgery is fairly common given the fact that most open heart surgery patients get sent home with diuretics.

My family on my mother’s side has a history of not holding sodium, but according to the lab results, I wasn’t low enough on sodium to cause muscle cramps. I eat salt like crazy all the time, nevertheless, I’m usually border-line low on sodium.

Before my valve repair surgery, and while I was waiting for my open heart surgery to be scheduled, I remember having muscle cramps. Dr. Blake, at that time, suggested Tonic Water for its quinine content. I’ll try that again today.

I can’t believe that all these diuretics are not causing the cramping problem, however, I now don’t know what to do next. Anyone else experienced this? At this point, I’ll try anything.

Lynn, my very best friend in the whole world and a darn good researcher, emailed me to say that the Prednisone medicine I recently took to treat my pericarditis could be the culprit. Prednisone has an extended half life (stays in your body and continues working).

Called the oxygen supplier today to have them pick up all this oxygen equipment. It made me so happy to be well enough to make that call.

On Saturday of this weekend, Connie, Lynn and I went to the outlet mall outside of Santa Fe. Lynn needed some new sandals. We drove on in to Santa Fe hoping to eat at Tomasitas Mexican Restaurant at the Santa Fe Station. No such luck, there was once again, at least an hour’s wait.

We almost never found the place as we came in from a different direction, but even getting somewhat lost was reason enough to laugh at ourselves as we circled, twisted and turned all around downtown Santa Fe.

We did eat some mediocre to down right awful Mexican food on our way out of town. I don’t remember the name of the place, but we all agreed to NEVER go there again.

The trip was great; we had a good time and a lot of laughs. It was yet another great outing for me, but I was happy to get home and take a nap.

Sunday, I camped out at home to rest and recuperate from the very busy week. Sometimes, I just feel completely wiped out for no apparent reason.