Hi, all---and hello to Mrozek. Glad you enjoyed those earlier posts, and in response to your earlier question: there was a guy who had his operation done in San Francisco some time ago. You can find his posts in the very first Pericardiectomy forum.
Is that a Tube in My Chest, or am I just Excited?:
A Brief Account, by Mister S
I just wanted to give a little overview of what my experience was like.
My wife, family members and myself arrived at the hospital on Tuesday, May 31st at 5:30 a.m., and were directed up to the CT surgery floor. I went straight in and was instructed to get buck naked. I put on my gown and my booties, and then they took a blood sample, and a series of residents and nurses came to see me and verify my information. They also stuck an IV into the inner part of my left elbow. Also, this dude shaved my chest.
At this point, I said farewell to my wife and family and they wheeled me away. They had started some kind of medication that made me feel extra loopy (and kind of good), and so I barely remember going to the OR. The last thing I remember seeing is that bright, overhead lighting. (I don't remember the groin shaving, or the insertion of any of the tubes or additional IVs.)
Evidently, I was awakened two hours later---quite a short surgery time. Unlike others who have had this surgery, I wasn't on the ventilator---they were able to take me off it in the Operating Room.
The first thing I remember upon awakening was saying, "I'm alive..." The nurse laughed and asked me to wiggle my toes and squeeze her hand. Then I asked for my wife, and she came to see me.
Some other details:
---like Nan, I had much of my pericardium removed, but the area surrounding the phrenic (sp?) nerves was left alone. (I guess you'd be in a lot of pain if they stripped that part.) The posterior portion of the pericardium was not removed, and, so far as I know, it's usually unnecessary to remove that part. Frankly, given human anatomy, I don't know how they could do it without either A) opening you up from behind---i.e., cutting through your spine; or B) Physically removing your heart, so they could turn it over and strip off the posterior portion of the pericardium.
---Also like Nan, I was put on the bypass machine. Now this is sort of scary, especially once you find out what this consists of. It's called a "bypass machine" because that's literally what it is: they make incisions into your aorta and (I think) one of your ventricles, and they insert tubes so that the blood can 'bypass' your heart. They also deflate your lungs during this (or at least they did for me), and hence all the breathing exercises afterwards.
As I said earlier, I had an IV in my left elbow, and also one in my left wrist from which they would draw blood samples. (This was all during my roughly twenty-four hour stay in the ICU.) I also had a main line / catheter in my neck, which enabled them to measure the pressure in my heart. I also had three chest tubes, and, my favorite, the bladder catheter. Since they'd been able to remove the ventilator in the OR, all I had on my face was one of those clear plastic oxygen masks. They took this off in a matter of hours and replaced it with one for just my nose.
I was pretty out of it during all of this. My wife stayed by my side and fed me ice chips. I can remember that my lips were very chapped, and they gave me a damp washcloth so I could wipe my mouth. One of the channels on TV was airing the extended version of "Apocalypse Now," which was just perfect for a person in my condition. Watching Marlon Brando hack that bull to pieces is just what I needed to see.
Later in the afternoon, my cardiologist came to see me, and I was so glad to see him. I could have wept. 
Also, the head CT nurse, my CT surgeon, the CT fellow, and the anesthesiology resident came to see me. (This last guy came at night, and he told me that it looked like this virus---the coxsacci [sp?] virus, they're guessing---had gotten into everything, including my myocardium. I was just lucky that my heart survived it.)
I didn't manage to get hardly any sleep that first day; perhaps twenty minutes worth at the most. This is because my pain meds (Vicodin and Dilaudid) weren't working properly (namely, the Dilaudid), and because the guy who was next to me in the room was a pain in the arse (he talked in his sleep, had a horrible, raucous, phlegmatic cough, and kept doing something that would make his monitoring equipment go off). In the morning, though, they gave me morphine, and that was a great relief.
In the night, a young lady from the respiratory department came by to give me a 'breathing treatment.' Basically, this is like a plastic hookah, and you inhale a steam that contains, I believe, albuterol and something else. Tastes nasty, but helps keep your lungs clean and clear, and prevents post-op pneumonia and all of that good stuff. I got that hookah about every four hours during my entire ten day hospital stay.
In the morning, they pulled the bladder catheter (which burned), and the cath in my neck (which was weird, since you can feel roughly 8-10 inches of that thing slithering out), and the big IV on my wrist. So, I only had the three chest drainage tubes (and these are truly nasty---translucent rubber tubes through which you can see this pinkish-reddish chunky fluid: crud that is coming out of your pleural cavity) and the IV on my elbow left.
The nurses at this point came in and forced me to sit up, which was excruciatingly painful. It's not the incision that hurt so much, it was the muscles in my back, ribs, and chest, and just the general readjustment my body had to make to sitting up. But, I did it. They had me order and eat breakfast this way, and then I had to lay back down again, which was just as painful as sitting up. It hurt alot the third time, too (when they put me in a wheel chair to take me to my main hospital room, on the CT telemetry floor), but after that it got much easier.
Well, this is getting awfully long. So, if popular demand merits it, TO BE CONTINUED.....
In any case: hope everyone's doing well, and best wishes to Cathy!