One day after surgery

Friday, January 30, 2009
I slept fairly well what with the drugs and the busy day I had on Thursday. The cast on my left leg has me pretty much stationary on my back. The trapeze hanging over the bed is very handy and I use it a lot to change my position. And the bed itself changes into 10,000 positions, too.

It's hard to stay asleep because there's a nurse every hour or so to check blood pressure or to take blood. But they need to do it. I also wake up when the man in the next room has various alarms go off. These don't appear to be noticed at the nurses desk and they can go on for many minutes. Last night I listened to one beeper go for 20 minutes before I called the nurse to come and shut it off.

Pain hasn't been a major problem. Once I slept too long and hadn't pressed the magic button for a couple of hours, but I took care of that soon enough. One nurse said I could press it every 20 minutes; another said every five minutes.

At 5:30 A.M., yes, 5:30 A.M., the night nurse and her assistant woke me and said it was their job to get me to sit up, get out of bed and sit in a chair. By the time we were done I was very much awake. The chair was comfortable and had a foot/leg rest in just the right place for me. I stayed in the chair until breakfast at 7:00 A.M. Lots of prunes with breakfast. All this morphine is constipating.

At 7:30 the day nurse came in and he took many of my tubes away. Gone were the IVs for fluids, and the one for antibiotics, and the morphine pump. In the brochure I was given last night it said this would happen 24 hours after surgery but I hadn't read it yet.

Most of the nurses work 12-hour shifts, three per week. There appears to be a separate staff for weekend nurses.

At lunchtime Jack came by and we had lunch. He brought a chicken sandwich from Wendy's, one of the fast food outlets located in the hospital. I had the official hospital lunch. Again the food here is surprisingly good. And if you don't want the meal of the day you can order other items, including deli sandwiches.

After lunch a new physical therapist arrived to take me to my afternoon session. We practiced how to stand up and how to sit down. The session was brief because there's so little I can do with the cast on my leg. It comes off tomorrow.

Back in the room I decided to sit in the chair until dinner. The therapist said this would be a good thing to do. About 30 minutes after physical therapy I was getting some serious pain and the nurse gave me some Vicodin tablets. Half an hour later the pain was worse and he said I would bring me "something to take the edge off the pain." He arrived with a large dose of something in a syringe and the pain was going away before he got it all into me.

A few minutes later the house doctor came by to see if the pain was better. He was the person who authorized the shot.

I don't remember much more that happened that Friday. Except that before bedtime I got my first shot of the blood thinner -- Lovenox, I'm to get it every 12 hours. It's the one I have to inject myself after I get home.