Welcome back @bellbird !! :):hug:
Thank you, b! Very glad to be back :hug:
Is it really five days since you went under because I woke up on the day of surgery and thought about you but that you would already be in theatre and that only seems like two days ago...
Yeah -- it seems both so long and so short at the same time.
Again, well done you! - Your're such a courageous inspiring woman! :hug::hug:
So happy to hear you are feeling better! :hug:
Thank you both, very much :hug::hug:
--
Will put this at the top of the post too:
TL;DR : a very detailed recap of today (a day in the hospital life of bellbird).
One week post op tomorrow :)
I was going to start writing my journey so far from Day 0, but I think I will start with today and then go back to the start. To give an idea of what goes on in my day, while it's still fresh in my mind.
Today's events started at 2am, when my nurse woke me up to give me some pain meds.
Same story at 6am.
I think in both cases the nurse woke me from a nightmare. Definitely for the 6am meds. My bed was soaked with nightsweats. Absolutely soaked.
I couldn't go back to sleep after the nightmare, and I was also in a tonne of pain. An 8, I think. That's another thing that I've been normalised to this hospital stay -- identifying your pain as a number on a 0(no pain)-10(worst pain imaginable) scale.
I tried to do a meditation that I'd found on my app, but only made it 6 min before needing something to distract me, and turning my phone onto music instead.
Then the nausea kicked in. The pain meds make me feel very very sick. I can take antinausea pills with them, which help a lot. But this is only my second full day of no morphine pump, so it's a learning curve for both myself and my nurses about what timings of each med type are best.
I pressed my call bell and got some nausea meds and then got up and walked over to my window to let some light in through the blinds. Then got back to bed and everything was a nauseous/painful/sweaty blur while I waited for the two meds to kick in.
I was also feeling quite weak in general, but I'm not sure if that was residue from the big day we had yesterday or because of my low haemoglobin that a blood test identified. Or because of the pain/nausea/nightmare combo. Probably a mixture.
I've been in the orthopaedic ward now for about 3 days, and routines are starting to be built. Which is good. I'm a routine person; they seem to really help me.
At 7.30am, my night nurse comes with the nurses on the morning shift to my room, and gives them an update on me.
At about 8am, either my surgeon or one of his registrars comes to visit me.
They ask how I am feeling, and give me any notable info from their end (from x-rays, blood tests etc).
Then we go over my goals for the day.
Today's goals were:
Continue fine tuning oral pain meds
Have a side on standing spine x-ray
Go for a long walk with my physiotherapist (where long = ~20 metres)
Learn how to wear my brace (I'll get to that when I recap my earlier post op days)
Then it's a little wait and breakfast arrives.
I always get so excited about hospital breakfasts, even though the food I get (rice bubbles, bread with spreads) is something I'd never eat for breakfast usually. I get up and eat breakfast in the arm chair in my hospital room.
With breakfast they bring a jug of water with lots of ice. The jug has volume markings up the side which I suppose makes it easy for the nurse and patient to keep tr
After breakfast, a phlebotomist will often come and take some blood for a blood test, but they didn't today.
The last 2 days I have been having a proper shower -- very exciting. I have my own room in the ward, with my own bathroom. Totally did not expect it, but it is really nice.
My nurse has to help me get undressed because little things like getting out of my underwear (just pants) is not possible at this stage.
There is a shower chair and lots of hand rails, and I am able to shower myself except for washing my feet which I need help with.
While I'm in the shower, my nurse makes my bed with fresh sheets, and then once I'm finished showering she helps me to get changed into a fresh gown.
Today's shower was slightly stressful because my apparently waterproof wound dressing must have come unstuck slightly at one edge, and when I looked down it was a water balloon. Oops. I let my nurse know and she rang the house surgeon, and they gave the all clear for her to replace it with a new dressing.
Then someone from the catering team usually comes past and asks what I'd like for lunch and dinner today, and breakfast tomorrow.
Then a nurse from the pain team usually comes to visit, and they ask how my pain is, and how I am doing on my meds, and update my chart if necessary. No updates necessary today; we're going to leave things as is for another day and see how I am tomorrow.
Then the lovely gentleman who is one of the ward cleaners comes and mops my floors. While I have successfully mastered reclined drinking and pill taking, reclined eating still needs a lot of work. So whenever I get up to go to the bathroom, the crumbs from my midnight snack go errywhere.
He is so friendly, and even though English is not his mother tongue, we still have a great conversation. I am so amazed by people who are able to hold a conversation in a language other than their first.
Then at about 12pm today my physical therapist turned up. Which was a surprise because PT normally come in the afternoon, but it was ok.
She gets me to show her how I sit up from being supine in bed. And then how I stand up from seated. And then we walk :) very slowly, out of my room and down the corridor.
And then my surgeon turned up right when we got back to my room! Also a surprise.
My PT is a final year uni student on placement at the hospital. Very competent and very sweet.
She'd never seen a consultant on the ward before, and she got sooo excited seeing my surgeon. It was so cute.
Soon after that, an orderly arrived at my room because I needed to have my x-ray and radiography is a few floors down from ortho. So I get to be wheeled to radiography in my bed. Right into the x-ray room! It's pretty great.
X-ray went well and surgeon will visit me again tomorrow to let me know how it's looking. If all is good, I am possibly going to be discharged on Friday!! Eep!
I got back to my room (wheeled in my bed again) and lunch was there. Slightly amusingly, they had basically given me everything on the menu, that I definitely didn't order. Not complaining, at all. Just put a smile on my face when I got back to satay beef with vegetables and mashed potato, and soup, and bread with butter and jam and honey, and yoghurt.
Phew.
My afternoon nurse then usually comes at 3pm to take my obs and ask about my pain and how I am in general.
Then today I had another surprise.
I -did- end up having bloods taken, but instead of one of the phlebotomists, it was one of my surgeon's registrars.
He said we'd met in ICU but I was very out of it. Wow. He was very beautiful to look at :D he said he will be the registrar that visits me tomorrow. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited.
Then he left and my mum arrived :) she has been visiting me everyday, and has been so great with allowing me my independence ; always offering to get up and go for a walk in the corridor if a health professional comes into the room to talk to me. There has been one moment where I got a bit "assertive" and expressed interest about what the names of the pain meds were because she should know for me coming home. I couldn't risk med name talk, so I just said that I don't know (pretty truthful because I've only just started on all these new meds), and that the good thing was she wouldn't need to remember their names because the team would write them down for me with their administration details when I leave so I'll know exactly what to take.
My mum stayed a couple of hours, and then had to go home. We talked, and I practiced walking -- She started videoing my walks since yesterday to keep track of my progress, and wow -- so much better than I was yesterday. Bring on tomorrow.
And I then just lay in bed and watched tv, when suddenly a nurse came into my room and said I was being moved to another room. Now. Oooookay.
I don't do well with change, particularly at short notice. But I coped ok. I had a spinal fusion less than a week ago. I can handle being moved to a new room.
My new room is a shared on; a curtain between us. I have the side with the windows which I'm very happy about.
I'd been in the room for about 15 min, before Bestie came to visit!
We hadn't seen each other in several years. But no time has been lost at all. It was wonderful. To be able to share with someone about the pain of having a chest drainage tube. Or what it feels like to walk for the first time with your new spine. She stayed about an hour.
While we were talking, my roomie walked through my cubicle to get to our shared sink. We said hello, but didn't talk much then. He'd actually had a spinal fusion too, on the same day as mine! But his was because he was in a car crash. Bestie had to go after about an hour, and then my roomie started chatting with me, and then pulled our separation curtain back a little so we could actually talk to each other with faces.
Then came the news that he was about to be moved, too! At the end of our conversation, he wished me a nice dinner. Got up from his bed, shook my hand, and handed me a hospital card with his number on the back, that said "your cute" your. ???? call me when you get out of hospital.
Ahah wow. Was not expecting that. He was great to talk to, but he is not good for me I know. Drug and alcohol user. His discharge kept being delayed because he needs to get off the morphine. He'd been acting like he had more pain than he did, to get more morphine. And I can't be in a relationship with a drug user (my abuser was, and I now have the ability to remove those set of triggers from my life, so that is what I need to do).
But he was sweet. And I've never had a guy hand me their number like that before. Also slightly amusingly, I was asked out while I was inpatient in the mental health ward last year. So I'm 2 from 2 for being asked out during an inpatient stay. When the orderly came to collect him, he then stuck his head around our curtain quickly and did the call me sign :laugh:
Ah, life.
Since then I've just been lying in bed watching tv. Still not feeling overly well, and am in some pain. Have had some pain meds and my sleep meds.
I think I'll end the post here.
Sorry this ended up being a novel.
The recaps of the other days won't be this long. I think my brain just enjoyed being able to write out what's going on.
Thanks for reading if you got this far.
TL;DR : a very detailed recap of today (a day in the hospital life of bellbird).
One week post op tomorrow :)
