Surgery Posting, Part 5

Surgery Posting, Part 1
Surgery Posting, Part 2
Surgery Posting, Part 3
Surgery Posting, Part 4
*******************************************

That evening, the resident comes by and says, okay, I think you are ready to move on to pureed foods. Orders go out. In comes the bland food with no flavor whatsoever! =) I got pureed chicken, mashed potatoes and mashed carrots. Almost all of it looked gross! I am still on two ounces at a time over an hour. I had to salt the carrots and potatoes to death in order to tolerate them, but I have one ounce of each, eating very slowly. I did not touch the chicken. It looked nastier than baby food and didn’t smell much better. Of course the diet booklet they give you encourages protein as a major part of your diet, ummmm, not eating pureed meat, you can’t make me!!!
The nurses on this floor were highly competent and willing to oblige my needs. By this time, I am walking unassisted and had started to take walks periodically as recommended to prevent clotting issues from happening. Usually I’d walk around the ward once or twice and then hit the room that had the ice machine, coffee, tea, jello and ice cream. They had some other snacks in there, but I of course was on pureed foods at this point, so I was pretty limited in what I could have. That evening, I was still exhausted from my breakdown earlier in the day, I fell asleep pretty early and didn’t wake up except when the nurses would come in to take my vitals or change out a medication.

SUNDAY
Sunday dawned and I was feeling a little bit better in regards to my pain levels. It is breakfast time. Prior to checking into the hospital, I made sure my record stated that I was allergic to Splenda(aka sucralose). Do you think dieticians can read? For the love of God! My tray arrives with a small bowl of malt-o-meal, a packet of Splenda, a four ounce tub of juice, a 4 ounce carton of skim milk, and a bowl of jello. SERIOUSLY? I question the poor delivery lady, she doesn’t know what happened, she takes the tray back and I assume, goes to fix it. Nope, she brings it back in, the Splenda was replaced with Sweet ‘n Low, that was the only difference. So, I proceed to ask her if the jello has Splenda in it? My how to booklet given to me prior to surgery detailing my food schedule strictly state sugar free or no sugar in all foods, so you have to know it has artificial sweetner in it, right? Guess which one???? $5 million dollars to the winner, yep, it is Splenda. She takes it away. I proceed to eat my malt-o-meal with Sweet n’ Low for flavoring. I set the skim milk aside, the nurse comes in to check on me at this point, she asks whats up with the milk. There has been a nurse switch since this morning, so she doesn’t know about my skim problem. I told her I needed 1%. She leaves, comes back two minutes later with a carton of 1%. Wow! She is amazing! She gets it! So, you’d think that every tray I got the rest of my hospital stay would be corrected to not have Splenda in or on any of my food and to give me 1% milk. The delivery lady made a phone call, my nurses are aware, you would assume the dietician ordering my food had gotten the message. Are you sensing my sarcasm at all? You got it, EVERY blasted tray had to be corrected in some way. You know what they say about people who assume?? Well, yeah, you get it. I still can’t believe I paid for this service!
The resident came by to check on me again and said my catheter could come out. I was ELATED!!! He also said I should be going home in the morning, YEAH! So, the nurse finally came in and took that out and then the only tube left on me was my drainage tube and my IV. My nurse asked me about a shower and I agreed to it for two reasons: a)I smelled like the hospital and b)thought it would make me feel “brand new” so to speak. So, the nurse unplugged my IV and we taped up my hand so it’d stay dry. It didn’t matter if water got on my drainage tube, so that just dangled. I was able to wash everything but my hair and my back on my own, the nurse helped me with that. It is rather embarrassing and almost demeaning to have someone else do that to you or for you, but she handled it with extreme professionalism and I didn’t feel as embarrassed as I thought I would. It felt good to just stand there under the hot water. I finally emerged from the bathroom in my own clothes(hate those darn hospital gowns) and felt like a new person. There is nothing like wearing your own clothes! Bet you’ll never guess what happened once I got back into my bed??? Can you figure it out??? Yep, my IV failed again! We had taped my hand to keep it dry during the shower, but apparently, that didn’t work too well. For about an hour after my shower, I watched my hand swell to double its size and finally decided I should go talk to a nurse. So I walk out to the desk and one look at it, they knew. I had blown another IV. I knew I was going to be released the next day and I told them they were not sticking me with any more needles, I would take any medication orally. My pain level was okay at this point; it was mostly muscle ache, so I was just taking Tramadol and was still on the Benadryl. The nurses said both could be oral, and agreed to leave the IV out after talking to the resident. Thank God. I swear I was their pin cushion! I pretty much spent the rest of the day vegging in front of the TV, napping, reading and walking or getting drinks or snacks. I had no visitors, but lots of phone calls.
For my entire hospital stay, my cell phone had what appeared to be one bar of signal, but it did absolutely nothing for reception, so while my phone would ring, I couldn’t answer anyone OR call anyone. Getting my hospital phone number out to people was quite the chore, but finally everyone who wanted to check in on me figured out how to do it. My Grama in California and my Dad in California called daily, as did my Mom. My brother Mark called, and my Aunt Lynn & Uncle Matt called. Grama Gardner called every day too. Laurie, Ang and Sara all checked in via phone as well. I even got a call from my roomie’s parents and sister. I am so glad for all the friends and family I have!
I fell asleep late that night and had an uneventful night for a change.