Thread: Hospital - Beards Warning !

Originally Posted by p38arover

Going in to have a stent next week. There was too much calcification to stent me when I had the angio. I saw cardiologist yesterday, they’ll try a new technique to shatter the calcium with ultrasonics before stenting. I might need two stents formed into a Y.

Sure beats having a bypass.

Yep, been there done that. Didn't have the calcium issue. Quite the geeks paradise watching the whole process while laying there paralyzed as you watch them place the stents and use the dye to figure stuff out. A bit off-putting with the x-ray head moving about over your chest all the time but if you can focus on the big screen if that is visible to you it is both awesome and a privilege watching experts in action. I will never complain of not enough elbow-room in an engine bay ever again after watching someone work in an artery in my chest on the big screen. My cardiac surgeon was a gorgeous woman from Scotland. We conversed throughout the process as she was working she was describing to me what she was doing. I had a double stent in the mid-LAD in 2017. You are quite right in that it beats the bypass. The return and recovery took time but I became fitter and leaner than I had been for a couple of decades. I really miss some items in the diet though... My cardiac surgeon told me to start out slowly afterwards. She said to walk to the letterbox and back to start with. I didn't tell her it was a 600m long drive to the letterbox... We had a wind storm not long after that blew down a heap of trees across the driveway. I didn't realise I wasn't allowed to lift my arms above my head after the op for a while and I also used my big chainsaw. I was told off on the next doc visit. I went out and bought a smaller chainsaw...

Bringing the original intent of the thread back into it, the only problem with my beard was it was too long and the nurses had to push it to one side to place all the electrodes on my chest for the ever present ECG device. When I had the first angiogram, I also placed my nitro-spray on my chest just in case it was needed through the process. When I returned back to the ward I couldn't find my spray anywhere. The nurses walked back along the corridor to see if it fell off. Nothing. Under me, nothing. Then an eagle-eyed nurse spied the spray in my beard and pulled it out. I usually got asked if I had found anything else in there by the wise-cracking nurses after that. Lots of fun in that ward. A room of second chances...

All the best with your next visit.

Originally Posted by JimN

Yes. I spent 5 days in icu and some of the nurses apologised that i had my beard and moustache shaven off. They told me that one particular nurse had a dislike for beards and shaved it off while i was asleep.

My kids are fully grown but they had never seen me clean shaven.

For me, it was a small price to pay for keeping me alive while my body repaired itself.

Not in my book ! - Did you at least "mention" this to the hospital management ? - Without sound - can be backed up in a Court of Law - medical reason...that was assault, IMHO