I’m finally trying to get back into the “all the details in the world” writing after a long break… though I’m still definitely struggling with energy and physical activity (ridiculous how quickly I get tired), I’ve been back at school and LOVING it. That said, the increased normalcy has meant significantly less time for writing and other non-school activities. Tomorrow is 10 weeks since the surgery (absolutely insane to think it’s been that long already), so I’m sure I’ve already lost a lot of detail. I’m disappointed about that, so I want to get the rest of this recorded while it’s still somewhat retrievable!
So, Saturday, January 14th, day 3 post-op….
Being in the hospital involves a lot of time not wearing clothes. This is particularly the case when you have extremely limited mobility. I am a hellishly self-conscious individual and in the days leading up to the surgery, I was very caught up in how uncomfortable it would be to be physically “helped” in so many not-at-all-modest ways. Emilie kept reminding me that in the moment, I wasn’t going to care at all about things like who had to see my ass and thighs. I was adamant that I would care and I would be mortified. Not shockingly, my ever-steady best friend was completely right and in my Lortab- and swollen-brain-induced stupor, I didn’t give a shit at all, the entire time I was in the hospital.
I was woken up that morning around 6am when the neurosurgery residents do rounds. The “main” resident (i.e., the sweet one who did all the talking and question-asking) said that I could take a shower if I wanted and, to my shock, said that I would be able to wash my hair. As soon as they left, I paged my nurse’s HCA and told her what the resident had said. She left to confirm the hair washing part (I was expecting at least a week of not being able to wash my hair!), and then returned with the happy confirmation and started getting the shower set up for me. I was so excited about the idea of an actual shower, as opposed to a repeat of Friday’s “awkwardly get scrubbed by a nurse with baby wipes.” With as much enthusiasm as someone less than 48 hours post brain surgery can muster, I sat up and balanced on the edge of the bed for a bit (with a lot of help from this lovely HCA whose name I can’t remember for the life of me) before attempting to stand. Walking the 4 feet to my bathroom (again, with so much help!) took a hilariously long time… but once I arrived, it was bliss. At that point, my hair was an f-ing rat’s nest held together with blood and antibiotic ointments (so nasty), and loosening up that mess while the warm water ran over my incredibly painful neck was beyond lovely. I remember how much I wanted to do this independently, but it became quickly apparent that not being able to move your neck up, down, or side to side makes it challenging to do things like wash yourself (you seriously have no idea how much you use the muscles in your head and neck until they’re injured!).
Initially, I had this grand plan that I was going to shower, brush my hair, dry my hair a bit (with a towel, not a dryer), get into nice, clean, comfy clothes, and so on. Well. After sitting up – and supporting the weight of my ginormous noggin – for upwards of 15 minutes, I was absolutely exhausted, nauseated, and my pain level was creeping up again. As soon as I was sufficiently clean (i.e., after I had sat in the warm water while the HCA pulled dry blood out of my hair), she grabbed me a bright and clean super sexy gown and we made the four foot trek back to my bed. No hair drying or brushing, and I didn’t care at all… I just wanted to be in bed and still again.
My dad has brilliant timing and showed up about 10 minutes after I was back in bed. I was okay, but being entirely responsible for supporting my own head had really triggered the pain to increase again… a few minutes after my dad arrived, someone from physical therapy came in and I (hopefully politely…) asked her to come back once I had gotten my next dose of pain medications. She had no problem with that, luckily. I was due for pain meds pretty soon and once that lovely, amazing Lortab kicked in again, I was good to go. The woman from physical therapy came back an hour or so later and I got out of bed for the second time that day (progess!) and, with her on one side and my dad on the other side, I managed to walk up and down one fairly short hallway. I definitely felt more stable than I had the day before, but was still so incredibly thrown off by feeling so weak and dependent. Again with the “apparently your neck muscles are important” – not being able to look down while you’re walking is surprisingly challenging! As we were walking down the hall, we ended up in view of my ICU room, which my dad pointed out. Given how detail-oriented I am, it was really strange for me to be told that I was in that room… and I totally wouldn’t have known otherwise. Also, for what it’s worth, I thought the acute care wing was much farther from the critical care area than it actually was! There was a bit of a, “Dude, I thought I graduated from ICU. I don’t want to see that shit.” moment. :)
Though I definitely did better walking with the physical therapy folks on this second try, I know that they wanted to see me more stable than I actually was. Luckily, I was too exhausted to get too caught up in being concerned about that at that point. We finally made it back to my room (probably not more than five minute later, but it felt like I had walked through the entire damn hospital) and I happily collapsed back into bed. The biggest thing I remember about this day was my absolutely fantastic nurse, Maegan. She was super calm, super sweet, really funny, and genuinely just seemed like she enjoyed what she was doing – every time she came in to check on me, she would chat for a bit and ask me a bunch of additional “comfort” questions, making sure that everything was perfect. She also described everything she did in detail which I really, really appreciated. Each time she came in and handed me a cup of pills, she told me exactly what they were, what they were for, and if/when I would be getting the next dose. She told me when she was preparing to poke me with something (I was getting both heparin and anti-nausea drugs by injection and you’d be shocked at the number of sweet nurses who would come in, not say a word, and just jab me in the arm or stomach… hi friends! Warning is cool.), and she explained everything she was putting into my IV. She was just fabulous.
The big “thing” for the day was getting my sodium levels back where they were supposed to be, as my bloodwork from that morning had showed that they were really low (apparently this is pretty common after brain surgery in general, but especially posterior fossa surgery, where mine was; it’s because your cerebrospinal fluid levels get all wonky). Maegan came in at one point and said that they had to give me an IV of something sodium-related (can’t remember exactly what it was, of course) and that it took about 15 minutes for the whole bag to go through the line. She said she had to stay in there with me the entire time it was going in because whatever substance this was had the potential to cause “severe tissue damage.” Sweet! Let’s definitely inject it into my veins then. Because of the high risk of tissue damage, the IV line they used had to be perfect. She flushed out the IV in my right hand and the saline burned, so we knew that IV couldn’t be used for sure. The flush for the IV in my left hand didn’t hurt, so she hooked up the burn-your-skin-off substance to that line. She told me, oh so adamantly, to tell her immediately if I felt anything other than just cold liquid. It was all good for about a minute, but then I started to feel an extremely slight burn through that IV line. I told her, emphasizing how incredibly slight it was, and she immediately stopped the drip and said I absolutely shouldn’t feel anything. This, unfortunately for me, meant that they were going to have to start another IV.
Maegan tried twice. She apparently hated started IVs in elbows and was sassed by the other nurses into trying. Through no fault of her own (I have the worst veins ever), both attempts failed. Then another nurse came and tried three times to no avail. Then a phlebotomist came in. And failed. The semi-sassy phlebotomist left and then came back in a few minutes later and said he wanted to try one more place… and for some freaking reason, he poked my on my upper inner arm. As in, where there is an abundance of fatty tissue. Not shockingly, nothing aside from a bruise came from this poke. They finally had to bring in an ultrasound machine in order to find a sufficiently non-scarred vein in my arm, which they eventually did. Throughout this entire excessive poking situation, I stayed almost completely still and quiet, despite the fact that I was getting increasingly irritated. Once the pokers were gone and we were waiting for Maegan to get back, my dad made a comment about how chill I was and, if it had been him, he would have been so annoyed…. and then I apparently shot him a look that clarified that I was, indeed, irritated as hell! Maegan came back a bit later and we successfully got the 15 minutes of this substance into my veins.
Then the next surprise… given my sodium levels that morning, I had to take three salt tablets at each meal from the rest of the time I was in the hospital. I didn’t think much of it until Maegan handed me the little cup with the pills hangin’ out inside. They were literally little solid circles of gritty salt. Taking them was like opening my mouth and pouring a cup of salt directly down my throat. SO gross. We luckily figured out pretty quickly that the way to do it was to take them with apple juice, as the sweetness of the juice was just enough to cut the insane saltiness so it was bearable. Still… there was groaning every time I was given those pills until Monday!
The day, overall, was pretty good. I had much more “awake time” throughout the morning and afternoon, and remember feeling decent when Emilie came to visit that evening. Ever so slowly, though, the nausea kicked back in throughout the afternoon and evening, and though I don’t remember specifics, I do remember going from pretty interactive to needing the lights in my room off and total silence as both the pain and nausea increased. The only saving grace of the evening was that I finally got to get rid of the terrible awful catheter (you’d think that essentially being able to pee yourself with no consequence would be nice, especially at night. But it isn’t, my friends. It really isn’t.). By 9 or so that night, I was frustrated and pukey and in pain and I think I actually remember, as much as I adored having him around, asking my dad to just head home for the night, as all I wanted in that moment was total silence and total darkness.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten details that, two months ago, I would have wanted to remember. So annoying. Alas…
Part 4 to follow! Eventually...
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