My Hospital Stay
My Hospital Stay
Hey there everyone! It’s been a while since I have had the opportunity to write. It’s been a little crazy and once I was back in the office and felt like writing, I had work that had to get done. But I promised a breakdown of my hospital stay in my last post. It was quite eventful like I mentioned even if it was only 2 days. Let’s get to it!
The first 24 hours were kind of a blur like I said before. My surgery was done on a Friday during a pandemic. This means no one could visit me in the hospital. That was fine since I am pretty comfortable with being alone with myself. Saturday was actually a pretty good day. I felt great. Although I was still on IV pain killers, I felt lucid and functioned well. I got up and walked around the nursing station a few times. I ate my lovely clear liquid diet of broth, jello, and popsicles sitting in a chair. I watched TV which was mostly house remodeling shows like Love it or List It. I talked to my family on the phone. I thought this is going pretty well. What I didn’t do is have a bowel movement. I didn’t realize how big of an issue this was until I got home Sunday. More on that later. Overall Saturday was a big success and then Sunday came and so did all the drama.
Early Sunday morning the lab came in to do my daily blood work. I may have mentioned before that I am a hard stick. Well, that came into play on this loveliest of mornings. I asked the lab person if I could use the restroom before getting stuck and noticed while in there that my IV hand had swollen up. They contacted my nurse and started to try to do the blood draw. Of course, that meant that they were restricted to my left arm only and were having quite an issue finding a good source. The nurse came in and told them to come back later. She removed my IV and needed to find a new spot for that. There was the next obstacle. She left and got another nurse to help her find a spot. By this time, I felt sick and nauseous. My pain meds were wearing off and although I could take the oral pain meds, I hadn’t completely transitioned yet. In addition, the nurse couldn’t give me anything for nausea without the IV. After several nurse attempts at the IV and the lab coming back numerous times to keep trying to take my blood, the nurse was able to put in an IV in my inner wrist of my left hand and told the lab to basically go to hell and not to come back. She gave me some meds and told me to try and sleep/rest for a little while. She did her best and I have no complaints about her attempts trying to help me.
A short while later, the doctor came in to check in on me. I told him about the IV incident and the lack of blood work and why. He asked if I wanted to go home later in the day and I said yes. I figured I was good based on the day before. So after he left, I started working on getting out of there. Still felt ok, besides the swollen hand from the bad IV. I tried to eat my liquid lunch and only took a few sips. I got dressed, packed up my things and the hubby came to get me in the early afternoon. Headed home.
Once home, I got comfortable on the couch recliner seat. I felt a little nauseous still, but I figured it was because of the oral pain killers. I tried to drink some jello and barely touched it. A slept a couple of hours and when I woke up, did not feel very well at all. Here’s the next obstacle. I have a hard time throwing up. Through every pregnancy when I was super nauseous, I suffered through it. I would try to make myself throw up and couldn’t. The only times that I have thrown up in my adult years is when I was so drunk that everything came up on its own. So here I am on pain killers and super nauseous. The hubby brought me a stockpot to try and throw up in. I was basically dry heaving and a little phlegm came out only. You are probably thinking that must have hurt my incisions. Actually and weirdly enough, it didn’t. It was mostly topical and didn’t come from the diaphragm. It also didn’t help really. I tried to eat again, but couldn’t take more than a bite or so. Took some more painkillers and went back to sleep. This was pretty much the rest of my day and night. My bedroom is upstairs and I didn’t want to try to make it up there yet so the hubby slept on the other couch all night, in case I needed anything. I felt like I went backward.
Early Monday morning, I woke up and went to the restroom. This is when that bowel movement comes into play. I exploded! If you have ever had a colonoscopy and had to drink the stuff that cleans you out and makes you feel like you are peeing out of your rear end, you know what I am talking about. I was afraid to get off the toilet, but man o man I felt a thousand times better. I was on and off the toilet for a couple hours, but I was a new woman! I was able to eat again, which was still a liquid diet and not much, but it helped with nausea. My hubby had taken the day off since, Sunday was so bad. I was thankful for that but I felt like I was ready to be on my own for the most part moving forward.
As I write this, it’s been about 6 months since the surgery. I hope to try to spend some time writing about the obstacles that I have faced since then. I can tell you this, I am down over 96 lbs. and 51 in. overall. My bloodwork is great, my blood pressure is perfect and I have had more energy overall.
Thanks for listening/reading! I appreciate all of you!