forget me nots and second thoughts pt 2

I could have sworn that I already posted this (or at least wrote it) but blogger either ate it or I'm going crazy. Place your own bets. There will be a drawing in a week. Anyway, back to the story.

I wasn't even awake yet from the anesthesia but I do remember coughing a lot, and being told by a nurse (I think?) that I was going to have to spend the night in the hospital. Once I could get my eyes open and make my vocal cords work, I asked why.

During the surgery while they were dissecting the gallbladder, somehow one of my arteries got cut lengthwise, and it took a while for them to get the bleeding under control. I'd lost a lot of blood and my vital signs were terrible. They'd had to put me on a ventilator and tried replacing the fluids I'd lost. Despite all that, my blood pressure was in the "half-dead" range, with my pulse and respiration incredibly slow and sluggish, and my temperature nearly 4 degrees lower than it should have been. In other words, I could have died.

I was supposed to have been in the PACU (Post-Anesthesia Care Unit) for about an hour, then spend another hour beyond that in Recovery, then from there I was supposed to go home. I ended up in the PACU several hours longer than planned while they tried to find me a bed. My semi-private room included a roommate that I don't believe I ever spoke directly to the entire time I was there, vibrating boots to keep me from getting blood clots in my legs, and a hat to pee in.

Within just a few minutes of being wheeled into my room, the nurse started telling me that I would have to get up and walk around in the near'ish future. I wanted to do it immediately, because after they pumped 3 liters of fluid into me, I was in desperate need of the hat. She started telling me that, no, it was much too soon for me to get out of bed. I would have to wait at least two more hours, and she would bring me a bed pan. I gave her a look, apparently quite similar to the one that can make The Captain run for cover, and told her to unhook me from the machines I was attached to. She finally relented and unhooked the vibrating boots, monitors, and everything except my IV, and against their advise, got out of the bed without waiting for anyone to help me up.

Part of the adventure in using the hat was learning how to sit, stand, and take care of certain biological functions without bending anything but my knees. I wouldn't actually see any of my incisions for several days, let alone know where they were or how big they were. All I knew at that point was that it hurt to move, which I expected. I did not, however, expect to have a rubber hand grenade hanging from a hole in my side to watch for clots and hemorrhaging.

The Captain came up to my room as soon as he was allowed, and looked petrified. At this point, I still didn't fully comprehend what had happened or why everyone was treating me like I was made of glass, and commenting on how well I was doing. Staff members that I hadn't actually met would ask me if I was the one who'd just come up from the PACU that morning, and didn't I look great?

At one point, however, The Captain left for a bit to pick up some things for me like a book I could tolerate, and the teddy bear he got me for Christmas last year. When he came back with the bear, one of the technicians who had been coming in periodically to check my vitals found a face mask and a hair net for the bear, and dressed her up like a little bitty surgeon. Every single doctor, nurse, technician, and visitor who came into my room after that had to comment on how cute my little bear was.

Every time I asked when I could go home, I got a different answer. The surgeon came into my room late that night, long after I expected him to have left, to see how I was doing. He assured me that I would be going home the next morning, likely without my hand grenade full of abdominal juices.

That night was probably the least restful sleep I ever got, even with the IV drugs I was still getting like clockwork. Literally every hour I would be woken up for a different poking or prodding. My vital signs were taken, medications given, and at one point I was even woken up to get an intramuscular shot of heparin into my butt. I was not impressed with that one. Somewhere around 5 am, I gave up trying to sleep and started pestering people about letting me go home. By 9 am, I got up and put on my street clothes from the day before, not quite being able to get my pants buttoned, but not really caring. Never again will I go to a hospital for any reason without a change of underwear, a toothbrush, and an MP3 player.

For several days after being discharged, there was a lot of whining and moping and don't-touch-me's and not wearing pants (unless they were pink zebra striped pj pants), before I said "That's it. I'm done." Just that quickly, I put away the narcotics they gave me the day of my surgery and haven't picked them up again since. It's only been a few days since I've been able to get my pants buttoned, and three of my four incisions are angry and red. The fourth one, ironically, is the biggest but is nothing more than a thin white line that disappears into my belly button.

Maybe in a few days, I'll come back and tell you all about the insurance fiasco that followed the surgery. If I remember. And assuming blogger doesn't keep eating my posts.