But there was and it went well. Christie and I went to the Hospital good and early once and again and were registered by 6:00 a.m. From there you move to an area of the Hospital that I cannot remember the name of but it basically herds all the people together that are getting surgery and gets them set up on a bed to be taken to the patient holding area. In patient holding your anaesthetist comes to see you, in my case my surgeon came as well. Finally a nurse will come and take you into the Operating Room. The operating room in this Hospital absolutely blew my mind. I had three nurses and three doctors looking after me. The table for spine surgery looks like it’s off a space ship with all these independent pads that support the body and manipulate it into the shape that they want. It seemed like all of the latest technological advances where there in that room with computer monitors and large tv screens everywhere you looked. Looking around the room made me feel very at ease about the competency of the Hospital and the hands that I was in. I only had a few minutes to look around at things and then I was asleep.
I woke up to a nurse calling my name and asking me how I was. I was in so much pain that I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs and punch her in the face for asking a question like that. I only remember telling them over and over that it hurt and I was cold. It took a few minutes but they managed to jack me up with enough narcotics to ease the pain which was a good thing because it was so bad that I thought I was going to pass out and throw up. Once the pain eased I managed to go to sleep for a while.
The next thing I remember was waking up in a different room and Christie was there wearing every emotion possible on her face, but you could tell that she was relieved. From there they gave me the pain pump which is connected to your IV and has a button that lights up every time you are eligible for a dose of narcotics. The idea is that you can self administer the narcotic when you are in pain. But you can only push the button once and then you have to wait until it is safe again before you can push it, in my case it was ten minutes. It turned out that for the most part I was rarely using it. The first night I used it 8 times in 8 hours when I could have used it 48 times. I don’t particularly like the idea of so much narcotics.
Day one I spent the remainder of terrified to move at all. No one told what I could or could not do, so I laid there immobilized with the fear of messing things up if I moved. That and the excruciating amount of pain that came with movement. So I just more or less drifted in and out of sleep, pushed the button and mumbled nonsense to Christie. I don’t really remember a whole lot of day one aside from pain and being dopey.
Day two was better, still alot of pain but better. The resident came and saw me at 6 in the morning to have a look at the incision and check to see how I was doing. He informed me that I could move around freely because my spine was immobilized and I didn’t have to worry. That was a tremendous relief knowing that I could move but the actual moving was no fun at all. Not sure how to describe the pain other than you don’t want it. It’s bad, very, very, bad. Next in to see me was my surgeon, he wanted to go through the same routine, just without me rolling over to expose the wound. He also quelled my fears with an explanation of how everything was locked together mechanically and I had no worries about movement. It seemed as though there was going to be an endless stream of medical professionals that day as the lab came next to get my blood and then came what I was dreading Physio.
They were there to get me up and walking. I knew that it had to be done, I knew that it was going to benefit my healing process, but I also knew that it was going to hurt like nothing else. It had to be done and I did it. Fortunately for me I was surprised, there was pain but no where near the pain imagined. We only walked about 20 ft total, to the door and back, but it felt like I walked 20 miles. And I use the term walk lightly, it was like a 140 year old man shuffling at the rate of 10 ft/hr. It seemed like forever and exhausted me. When I was done with the walk she wanted me to sit in the chair and eat my lunch. It sounded like a wonderful idea, if walking was that easy then this would be a piece of cake. It’s funny how you get ideas in your head that seem logical only to find out that there is no logic involved in this. I was wrong again and there was no logic again, that chair just about killed me. I couldn't eat my lunch fast enough to get back in that bed!
Again I was surprised about how many professionals were looking after little old me, because next came to ladies from the pain clinic. They are the ones that figure out your pain meds and how much to bring you up or down. They were there to see how the pain pump was working for me so that they could make any adjustments in my pain plan that they needed to. From there the day only got better, Christie showed up which is always an improvement on anyones day. We got out for a bit of a walk which went better than the first one. Beyond that it was just visiting with Christie and trying to manage the pain.
Day three felt like substantial improvement. I woke up feeling much better, with greater ease in turning and rolling in bed. I went through the same processes as the day before with all the same visitors. The only real difference was that I could get up so much easier and felt great walking. I managed to get out to the tv room and a big lap around the floor. Once again Christie came in the afternoon and we spent our day together. By this time the pain clinic had taken away my pain pump and IV because I told them that I no longer needed it and it was ineffective with my nerve pain. The nurse also removed my catheter at my request.
So I was dressed in my PJ’s and ready for some serious walking. Walking went quite well, we made some rounds around the floor and got my GI system moving along. When we got back to the room I sat down for a few minutes and when I go up I did not use any support which was foolish because it set me back three days, the pain was incredible. It was straight back to the bed for me and I wasn’t moving for the rest of the day. It was so bad that I asked to get the pain pump back, unfortunately they can’t give it to you until the pain clinic reassesses you. So I had to lay there until the next day and just suffer.
Fortunately waking up to day four was much better. I was feeling quite well again. First thing in the morning they were telling me that I was being sent home and I just needed to tell them what time I could be out of there. After consulting Christie we settled on noon.
Since I was being discharged everyone needed to see me from the nurse that actually does all the work to thrombosis clinic. So we got to work and ridded me of my IV, and changed my dressing at which point the nurse was kind enough take a picture of the incision for me. He then got my package of orders from the surgeon that told me all the appointments I need to attend and what I can do before I see him again.
The nurse from the thrombosis clinic came and explained to me what I needed to take for blood thinners and when to get my bloodwork done. She also gave me a package with all the information on appointments, directions etc.
The last one that needed to catch me before I left was the physio team because they wanted to do stairs with me. They took me to one of the nearby stairwells and watched me go up and down the stairs to make sure that I could do them on my own. And they give you some little tips on how to do the stairs safely in my condition.
Beyond that it was just exchanging information with my roommate, having a few laughs and getting the heck out of there. It worked out well for us because my roommate Norm had a friend there that was getting to leave and he was incredibly generous with his time and efforts. John offered to take me down front with all of my bags to wait for Christie while she ran off to the parkade and retrieved the car.
And so we were gone. The ride home was reasonable once I was on the QEW, but the parts through town like Burlington St. were horrible. All in all I fared okay and made it home without too much additional pain.
My mom came over for a visit once I was at home and brought me a wonderful homemade lasagna and shepherds pie. After she left the kids showed up to eat the lasagna and have a bit of a visit before Christie and I took them home around 8pm. The end of the day was just the two of us melted into the furniture drooling like zombies. The week had caught up with us. I’m not sure what time of night the two of us got to bed but I think it was fairly late.
Waking up on day five at home felt like heaven. Just heaven without a pain pump. I had a lot of difficulty sleeping because I was completely unable to lie flat on my back, so I was forced to sleep on my sides which was reasonably comfortable but proved to bring a tremendous amount of pain to my hips in the morning. After letting some pain meds do there work it was refreshing to get up and walk around. It actually felt really good. But I can’t stay on my feet the whole day or it will not feel so good anymore.
I had a doctors appointment to see if I could get my pain meds bumped down because I feel they are too strong. The doctor disagreed and told me to keep taking them for a week because if I take too little and the pain gets out of control it will take far more meds to get it back under control. So I’m still taking the stronger pills, but I will be seeing the surgeon on October 12th and he may recommend reducing my meds. At least that is what I am hoping.
By the time is was bedtime I was finally able to lie on my back, which would make for a great improvement in sleeping.
When I woke up on day 6 I was on my back and pretty sore but I opted to not take any pain meds and see what would happen. I ended falling back asleep until 8:30 and woke up feeling pretty good.
I got out of bed with little difficulty and had no trouble moving. Things were looking up. Once we got our bodies woken up Christie and I decided to go for a walk up on the escarpment with the puppy. We ended up walking just over a mile with some of it being on a trail in the woods. Of course I was using a walking stick for added support and insurance. In the end it worked out very well as I was feeling better by the time we finished the walk than I did when we started.
The rest of the day I spent sitting and laying at Christies work while she feverishly got things ready for Tuesday morning, she didn’t like leaving me alone at home and I knew that she really needed to get these tasks performed so I insisted on going with her. God knows she does enough for me, it certainly wouldn’t hurt me to take 4 or 5 hours out of my afternoon for her. After all they do have a reclining couch there and plenty of computers for me to play on. It was not different than being at home.
After work Christie helped me get showered, made me some dinner and then we went out. She had some shopping that she needed to get done for work, so we decided to make an outing of it. I probably walked a couple of miles in Wal-Mart as well. It was tiring us out, but we knew it would make us sleep. So in the end day six left me feeling quite well and I got plenty of therapy in :)
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