Can Your Attitude Impact Your Mom’s Recovery From Heart Surgery?
Your mom’s undergoing heart surgery. Of course, it’s going to make you nervous. However, your anxiety may make it harder for her. She’s nervous, too, and needs your support. No matter how hard it is for you, it’s time to embrace a positive outlook. It may be a good time for you both to look into Home Health Care assistance.
Home Health Care in Culpeper County VA: After Surgery Care
Help Her Become an Informed Patient
She’s stressed, but she needs to listen to her surgeon. The more she knows about the upcoming surgery and recovery, the easier it is to work through that anxiety. She should ask if it’s worthwhile working with a dietitian to improve her diet and if a physical therapist is beneficial to help her with exercising after the surgery.
Support Her During the Recovery Period
Over the decades, heart surgeries have advanced to a point where one-year survival rates are almost 100% for specific procedures. Success rates are highest in people who are supported during the recovery.
Encourage your mom to carefully follow her surgeon’s instructions on what she can and cannot do for activities, the proper diet to follow, and post-surgical care. Her recovery at home will take around six weeks, so she needs the support of home health care nurses for this time.
Understand How She Will Recover
Learn more about how her recovery at home will go so that you know how to best support her. She’ll be in the hospital for about a week. At home, she will have energy some moments and feel drained another. This is normal.
While her incision heals, she has to be careful bathing. She should stick to plain soap and water and gently wash her healing incision. She shouldn’t pull, rub, or scratch at the incision. When she’s done, she has to pat the area gently and cover it with a sterile gauze pad if she finds her clothing rubs on the incision.
The steri strips that the surgeon puts over the incision can be left to fall off on their own. After a week, her surgeon may tell her she can remove any that remain. She should not put any lotion on the incision unless her surgeon tells her to.
Your mom’s cardiologist may tell her to weigh herself each day. She’ll also need to take her temperature, pulse, and blood pressure. A nurse can help with this.
She should be taking a slow, leisurely walk each day to build strength. Join her. Your support on these walks is one of the most helpful things you can do for her.
Arrange Home Health Care Services
At home, your mom will need someone to help her during her surgical recovery. Wound care, vital signs monitoring, and medication management are all important for her. Talk to a home health care agency and learn about the benefits of having nurses come to your mom’s home.
If you or an aging loved-one are considering hiring Home Health Care in Culpeper County, VA, please contact the caring staff at LivinRite Home Care.
Call Us Today at (703) 634-9991.
Sources:
https://columbiasurgery.org/conditions-and-treatments/coronary-artery-bypass-grafting
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