The Heart Pillow. Every Open Heart Surgery Patient gets one, you hug it to help stand up and sit down, hold it close to keep your chest from expanding, cling to it as you try to breathe.

I think I finally turned the corner this afternoon on my week-long struggle to regain control of my blood, my sleep and  my body temperature. If I’m not there, I’m close. Open heart surgery is not only about the heart, such invasive surgery – especially one that requires powerful anesthetics to keep the patient unconscious for many hours – affects the whole body. I take two basic medicines for my diabetes, Metformin, a grounding medication, and insulin, which works effectively in conjunction with Metformin.

The Metformin does not mix well with some of the dyes injected into my veins last week, I had to stop taking it. Bypass surgery involves trauma, life support, transfusions, all of these knock blood sugar off of it’s pins, and without Metformin, it is almost impossible for diabetics like me to regain control of my blood sugar levels. After the sugar they began rocketing up and down, higher than they had ever been, and with a host of devastating side effects – profuse sweating, kidney and personal issues, sleepnesness, weakness and drowsiness, even disorientation.

I was told I couldn’t take Metformin for at least a month.

For more than two years, I have been scrupulously maintaining control of my diabetes, my numbers were excellent. All that fell apart last week, I was warned by the doctors that my diabetes would shoot out of my control and there was little or nothing I could do about it. I tried increasing my insulin, changing the times, altering my diet, but the numbers kept rocketing up and down. My numbers were frightening, it was hard to see them go higher than they had ever been.  My kidneys, say the doctors, finally nourished with enough blood, are having a festival.

I spent the nights near the bathroom, I didn’t sleep much for days. This morning I went in near desperation to my nurse-practitioner and she said she wanted me back on the Metformin but she couldn’t contradict the will of the surgeons.

The good news is that the infection near my incision is gone. And in two weeks, I’m signing up with a famed diabetes clinic in Albany to learn more about the disease and how to control it properly.

When I got home, I got on the phone and tracked down one my surgeon’s nurse and after some discussion, she said it was okay for me to go back on the Metformin. Curiously, it did not seem a big deal to them, after all the warnings to stay away from it. The insulin began working again, my numbers immediately began to drop, I took a good mile-long walk tonight. I have stopped sweating, my body seems to be returning to itself. The specter of a month like this is receding, and I am hopeful about sleeping tonight.

I am learning that such surgery is not one thing, but many things. I am navigating a complex bureaucracy which can do wonderful things almost effortlessly but grapples mightily with the smallest things. Patience is critical, so is a longer view of healing. I am taking things one at a time, doing well. There is a nurse who works for my health insurance company, she is incredibly helpful, she calls every day and answers the scores of questions Maria and I have, but never quite got the answers to.

This week was a skin infection near the incision and a diabetes riot. Next week may well bring something else. These are not crises, not really, they are all part of the same process, beginning with my tell-tale heart, the producer of life in my body.