On my second evening in the hospital Dr. Amson was in and checked on how I was doing. Which was pretty good. I had been up and walking around, I was in happy spirits, and feeling ready to go. He agreed and gave instructions to have my drain removed. If you have never had a drain before they are totally icky. It is basically a long thin tube that goes into the side of your chest just below the rib cage and attaches to some point way down inside of you. Outside of you is a continuation of the tube which leads to a bulb that is about the size of a tennis ball. The ball is scrunched down and forms a suction that will pull excess fluids out of you and into it as a storage chamber. This little ball that gets heavier as it is filled up is attached to your hospital gown and becomes your little buddy everywhere you go. All I had was this picture in my mind of my dog Precious who would see this ball reach up and grab it with her mouth. Precious loves balls and thinks every ball is something that she can play with. The nursing staff will drain the ball about twice a day and for some people they will teach you how to do this at home for yourself. I was so relieved when they said they would remove it on Thursday night.
GROSS ALERT *skip this paragraph if you get grossed out easy*
Removing the drain was likely the ickiest thing I did in my whole hospital stay. It starts by the nurses laying you on your side so that the line from the tube inside you is going upwards. They drain off the collection ball and cap the tube. Then they get you to think of something else while they slowly pull out the tube. I know you cannot feel the tube moving around inside of you but you can anticipate each centimeter of tubing and feel it as it is drawn out. Finally the plastic (or whatever it is made of) tubing comes out but there is still another 10 inches or so of this stuff that follows it. All in all there is about 24 inches of tubing and in my case another 1o inches of blood clot on the tube. A couple of steri-strips closes the wound and it is all over. It takes about 10 minutes and is, in my opinion, just plain icky.
GROSS ALERT OVER ****
At home I have this huge comfy bed with lots of quilts and pillows, an electric blanket, a warm spouse and the occasionally visiting big hairy dog who lays over my legs until she has had enough. At the hospital I had this uncomfortable plastic mattress that was set at a 30 degree tilt up, one ancient and flat pillow, a pad for under my hips, a blanket and a spot under a cooling vent. What is with the heating in post op recovery? I know they really care about their patients but it was so cold in there I am sure the hospital was trying to make us last longer like we were items on the shelf of a refrigerator. Brrr. I asked for more blankets and another pillow and tried sleeping again. Fortunately I remembered to ask if Dr. Amson would give me a sleeping pill. Nix on the sleeping drugs but I could have an Ativan. http://www.drugs.com/ativan.html.
I waited before taking the Ativan until we did all my blood sugar tests and was sort of sleepy enough to go to sleep. The pill does not make me sleeping but it does calm you down a lot. So soon I was fast asleep which lasted from about 10pm to 1:30am. Then I was wide awake. I knew I had to get some sleep so I tossed, turned and shivered the rest of the night until it was a reasonable time to wake up. About five thirty I woke up with this strange but familiar sensation. I had to have a bowel movement. NO WAY- Kerri told me she didn't have hers for five days and here I was less than 48 hours. But nope, my body has it own schedule and yes, the plumbing works!
I went back to sleep for a while longer. Even though Dr. Amson had everything ready for me to leave I couldn't go until Dr. Miller gave his a-ok. Dr. Amson came in at about 7am - My god that guy works long hours - but we didn't hear from Dr. Miller until 8am. But soon he was in and I was given the go-ahead to go home. My prescriptions for my diabetes had dropped from taking 9 metformin pills to only 3, my insulin requirements dropped from 100-160 units per night to 50 units. So there I was ready to go home. The nurses gave me my going away package from Dr. Amson (prescriptions for Tylenol 3 http://www.drugs.com/mtm/tylenol-with-codeine-3.html and another medication for an upset stomach. Included in the collection was some pages for Post Bariatric Guidelines. I will put them in my next post for you.
So here I was ready to go but I was not allowed to leave until I had my breakfast. Since we live about 20 minutes from the hospital I called Marla to come pick me up; then I waited for breakfast. And I waited. And Waited. Finally in about 25 minutes it arrived and I ate next to none of it. I was more anxious to get my stuff and go. Finally, I got out and found Marla and was ready to go home and start this new chapter of my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment