The pain seems to be in many positions…but we slog on with physio exercise in the hopes pain will decrease soon…
Woke up in the ‘after the surgery’ ward, better known as the “recovery” ward
I woke up and realized I was in a post-op ward. Like my other surgery, I’m on the slab in the operating room and one of the doctors says count backwards from 100. I never get to 97. Next thing I know I am groggily trying to see where I am…the post-op ward. As I take in my surroundings, just 3 or 4 other post-op patients are here with me in. Weekends are slow days in hospitals.
They stole my legs; maybe did the wrong operation…
I tried moving my legs, nada, nothing. Absolutely nothing, no feeling, a block of wood from the hips (oh, sorry, one hip…the new one doesn’t count yet. After all, it’s only been attached for a few hours). I felt nothing as the nurse tapped my leg at various points to see if the sedation was wearing off. Slowly, the feeling started to return: first the good hip. soon after the legs, the ankles and the feet. I still couldn’t wiggle my toes for another hour or so. Once recovery staff felt I had returned to the land of cognizant, they wheel-chaired me to my room for my overnight stay,
Xrays again…
Think hospitals can’t screw up? Think again. My X-rays were taken at the partner hospital as I had been instructed. They got lost somewhere in Google Land or iCloud. I don’t know as I had nothing to do with their transmission. But every cloud has at least some sprinkles of a silver lining… Barb, the transporter, was a fountain of knowledge. Coincidently, she even had knee replacement surgery, proudly pulling up her scrubs pant leg to show a long scar over her knee. Didn’t make me feel better but her constant insistence that the pain was at its worst for the first couple of days. Then it becomes bearable and finally, it subsides. I wish…
As I say a fount of knowledge, Barb told me about the ice machine that I got from my in-laws, along with a walker. I also got stuff from Councillor Maurice Brenner. It’s nice to have friends like that.
Wheeled into my room,,,
I was in a semi-private room with another patient who had been here since the first week of October, He was a line cook at the Ajax-Pickering Casino and was attended to a lot. Oxygen machine beeping away, his TV murmuring some soap op.
PAGE and TRISH…
Two sparkling young nurses tended to our needs until lights out at about 10 pm. Page and Trish, are two highly energetic and bubbly professionals and Trish turned out to be a lifesaver.
I fell asleep with some difficulty. The other patient had oxygen being pumped in for his special needs and the machine confirmed its operation with a damn beep, every 10 or 15 seconds…the hospital version of the faucet dripping and keeping one awake but the oxygen-generating machine was nothing compared to the team of lumberjacks that arrived to rip saw the trees in the room around 11 pm. This was the first problem of the night., The second arrived with the lumberjack team. HE SNORED! Not like just one man but like a team of lumberjacks using high-powered SKIL saws that roared loud enough to wake the dead. Nobody could die in this room the way this man snored. Eventually, good fortune was on my side, Trish found a pair of earplugs, lucky me and they worked wonderfully.
Were it not for my medication needed every four hours, I would have slept through the whole night but, alas, 2 am, wake-up call, meds time, zonked out; 6 am meds repeated, 8 am breakfast. I was starving as I had not eaten anything since last night a 7 pm. I was zonked though. My coffee seemed like hot water…which it was until I learned from my other nurse, Trina, that I needed to add the instant coffee to the hot water. Better coffee once coffee was added, tasted like coffee now. Old age or medication.
After brekkie, my physiotherapist, Jean, tickled my ears with her Irish lilt but she was a PRO at her physiotherapy. Not only did she have me walking, but I was climbing stairs. The need for a chair lift for our two flights of stairs was questioned now. An hour after my physio session, Nadia arrived for the final leg of my return trip home.
I dislike hospitals as they are the last stop for many ill people. It was not so for me this time. I made it home and now a new unfolds.
The witch of pain…
Every move now is a challenge: getting into the car, getting out of the car, getting over the two-step entrance into the house from the garage. All I see are PAIN labels everywhere.
I tested the walker from the garage into the house, from my office to the Family room. All systems good, pain even better in that its intensity increased with degree of movement.
And the stairs to go to the bedrooms. Did I say stairs? They’re not stairs. The Mount Everest escarpment moved from the Himalayas to Pickering. The stairs now look like insurmountable peaks. I took a stab at them…and was rewarded with shooting pains on each step. But I made it.
Bedroom challenges…
The ancillary challenges to getting upstairs were the bathroom ones. Who was the maniac who had to raise the floor to the bathroom? Bedtime, otherwise known as “Szpin accepts the challenge: Mount Everest…indoors.”
Next chapter CLICK —>3. HIP Saga – pain’s purpose
