How long will it take me to recover from heart surgery?
Recovery after heart surgery depends to a great extent on exactly what your particular surgical procedure was like. In the simplest case, for example, bypass surgery, patients are often in the hospital only 4 or 5 days after surgery. You may go home feeling clearly still somewhat sore in the chest, finding that you have to hug your chest with a pillow to be able to cough comfortably and still needing some pain medication. But in fact, you'll find that you progress remarkably rapidly and even if you've had a chest incision through the breastbone, which takes some time to heal, usually about 6 weeks for a bone to fully be healed. And you'll have some soreness there. You'll find that day by day you're gradually able to undertake more activity and feel comfortable doing it. You don't want to push beyond where you feel comfortable. An important thing for the family to realize, is that you shouldn't lift heavy things in those first days at home, but that you can't do damage to the bypass grafts. People often worry about doing something or tearing them loose or injuring the grafts. And in fact, your activity at home really cannot hurt the grafts. They're in there and they're very, very well protected.
