Day After Surgery

11:10am


I can’t wait to see what’s in store for lunch after my breakfast of broth, red jello, and mint tea. A strange combination for breakfast, but being that I’m on a clear fluids diet, it’s pretty creative.

Dr. G said that I’d be here for one day so that it would be considered “outpatient” surgery, but one of the nurses said that this sort of surgery routinely calls for 2 to 3 days of hospital stay. (She likened my surgery to that of a hysterectomy….is this as bad as that? Or worse, because my uterus has to heal from the 4 fibroids excised and the removal of two tubes?)

There’s sign on my wall that states, rather hotel like: “11:00am Discharge Time”. 11:00am has come and gone and Nurse K has just stopped by to say that she’ll be by with my 12 o’clock meds in a while. So it doesn’t look like I am going anywhere fast.

Everyone here is phenomenally nice. It’s amazing. I think Dr. Moustache’s office ought to recruit from here.

I just discovered that my pain button is directly tied into that Dilaudid stuff that was making me fly last night. Wish I could bring the rest of it home with me.


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5:37am

There is a nifty button on a cord next to my bed for pain. I think I’ve pushed it all of four times so far. Wishing I could take this home with me.

They came to check on me every three or four hours throughout the night. Nurse E was swapped out for Nurse A, the latter of whom came in at 5:00am and got me out of bed for the first time. Walking around with a foley hanging out of one’s nether regions is both difficult and scary. The sensation of the catheter being pulled by nothing but gravity for a few seconds while Nurse A affixed the loose end to my gown made me feel like a bathtub with someone pulling on my drain chain. If they pulled too hard I feared that I’d wet myself like a small child.

The sensation of dizziness is still with me, and the effects of the anesthesia aren’t yet gone. As she raised the bed in order to get me to rise, my jaws started chattering away. Nurse A thought that I might just be scared of being raised, but I have reacted very much like this in the past to being put under. But she was also right: I was a bit scared.

So at 6:00pm, Nurse C is coming to remove the foley and then I’ll have to get myself to the bathroom on my own when I need to. I’ve been slugging back my propel throughout the night, impressively filling out my bag, but I think I’ll lay off the juice a bit once that foley is gone.