SI_Mike

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Day 4

The make me or break me day.  My second swallow test is scheduled for this day.  I am now NPO (no drinks) for four days and by this point it is wearing on me.  I am woken up at 6am with the nurse on one arm switching the IV port and a blood tech on the other arm drawing blood.  A double whammy for the guy that doesn’t like needles.  While I am giving most of my attention to the nurse doing the IV port, the blood tech is preparing my hand to draw the blood.  Why do they have to draw from the hand and not the arm?  It gets worse.  All of a sudden it feels like a needle is scratching a bone.  I look down and the blood tech is drawing blood from a vein next to my knuckle on my pointer finger.  Well, time to start yelling again.  Dropped an F-bomb and asked her why with a whole arm and hand to choose from would she choose to draw from my knuckle.  This is her job…and this is the best she can do….ughh.  By 9 am it was time for my next swallow test.  I was nervous as hell because I knew failure meant extra days in the hospital.  Luckily the test went well and I passed.  I was able to start consuming liquids.  Whole new meaning to Liquid lunch!  The resident docs passed by later in the day and said there was a chance I would leave the next day but probably not until day 6 since they usually want you on clears for two days.  The surgeon I used is ultra conservative, which I think is great.  Add in the complicated surgery and my size, I was more than willing to go along with what they said.  The rest of the day was filled with laps around the floor, visits from family and laughs with my roommate. 

I woke up a wee bit depressed because I knew Vinny was definitely going home and I was only a 50-50 shot.  It all depended on my morning lab work and vitals. By 11am we both got the news that we were being released.  I had the added bonus of having my drain taken out before I left.  The drain coming out kinda spooked me because I feared it would be painful.  It wasn’t painful but it was a weird feeling that is indescribable.  My roommate and I packed up, exchanged contact information and said our goodbyes.  We both chose the option of walking ourselves out rather than taking the wheelchair escort.  All in all my surgery and hospital stay was a huge success with only a few hiccups along the way.  The best advice I can give is to be alert, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and stay on the move.  While in the hospital walking really does help. I’ve been fortunate to have had no pain at all and only some minor discomfort.  Thanks and love to my family and friends for the tremendous support.

Day 3

I woke up in recovery again was downgraded to ‘post-op’ but couldn’t be moved because there were no beds available.  Although I was downgraded, they still treated me as a recovery patient since I was still there.  The downside to that is every time you hop back into bed you have to be monitored with a bp cuff, the electrodes attached to your chest, oxygen in the nose and the finger sock that measures your oxygen level.  It was a great incentive to stay out of bed and keep moving around.  By now I was measuring time by nurse shift changes.  Wifey brought up some cookies and fruit for the nurses, which was well received.  It can’t hurt to kill’em with kindness. The rest of the day was filled with blood work… needles… meds… needles… over and over… blood thinner med was being delivered by a shot to the stomach…ugghh.  Around 5pm I got the word that I had been downgraded to the floor and would bypass time in the post-op area.  This was the best news of the day.  I packed up my stuff and walked myself over to my new room.  This is when I knew things were really looking up.  My new roommate was “My Cousin” Vinny from recovery.  This was the best medicine for a post-op-er….being able to share the experience with someone in the same situation as me.  Settled in for the night and shared pre-op and surgical experiences with my new friend.

Day 2

The next day I woke up in recovery and was told that I was going to stay in recovery because there were no post-op beds available and I needed to be monitored before being released to a floor room.  Recovery is not a nice place to hang out all day.  Although, I did meet “My Cousin” Vinny in recovery.  He had his surgery after me and we both used the same surgeon.  Throughout the day I got poke and prodded countless amount of times by countless amount of people.  I went for the swallow test and failed.  There was too much swelling and I would have to wait 48 hours to try again.  That was depressing because all hopes of leaving the hospital on day 4 faded away.  Little did I know that the day was about to go from bad to worse. My labs came back that I was low in potassium and they would have to push it through the IV.  I made sure I asked each time what meds they were giving me.  The first few minutes of the potassium push was fine, but then I started to feel a burn.  I called for my nurse but she was on break and another nurse came to check on it. She told me that it was common and I would be fine.  As she is telling me this, it is getting increasingly worse to the point where it feels like my hand and wrist are on fire and I am unable to move it.  She tells me there is nothing she can do other than to stop the push.  Well, it was time to start yelling again which alternated between yelling at her to do something and screaming in pain.  It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.  Another nurse heard the racket and came in and flushed the port which made the pain go away.  She also said that the bags weren’t piggy-backed properly and there was a way to do it without inflicting pain.  It amazed me that the level of care, knowledge, and compassion could vary so much by professionals performing the same job.  This was my second of three bad hospital staff experiences.  I don’t want to paint a bad picture of the hospital so I will say that every other person I encountered was phenomenal.  As a whole, I was extremely happy with the overall care and treatment while at the hospital.  For the rest of Day 2 I wasn’t in any pain but I did have this uneasy feeling in my stomach which only got worse as the night went on.  Thoughts of puking passed through my head but I was afraid to in fear or causing damage to my fragile new stomach.  As the night went along I kept getting the urge to swallow and when I did it felt like my stomach was being squeezed.  I finally couldn’t take it anymore and told the nurse I needed to vomit.  It was a graceful throw-up without any pain.  The shocking part was what I threw up…it looked like a bucket of blood.  The nurse freaked out and within a minute three doctors appeared out of no where.  I was scared to death.  They all took a look at the bucket of blood and determined that it was a mixture of left over blood and fluid from the surgery and the liquid barium that I drank early that day for my swallow test.  That made a lot of sense since I was restricted from the swelling.  Instantly after I threw up I felt 1000x better and felt I was on the road to recovery.

Well….I made it through the surgery and hospital stay.  This is going to be a long post, but I hope it helps others. So here goes it…

My surgery was about three hours.  The surgeon told my wife it was a complicated surgery, but everything went according to plan. I woke up in the recovery sometime later that afternoon.  I don’t remember much of the first few hours of recovery.  Early that evening it was time to get me up and walking, for which I was ready and willing.  Well all that happened too fast and midway through my walk I knew I was going to pass out.  A nurse’s aid was with me and I was able to get to a chair before I blacked out.  I do remember the nurse’s aid walking away from me as I blacked out. When I came to I was alone.  Another nurse was walking by and asked if I was ok because I was sitting there drenched in sweat and white as a ghost.  I made a big stink about being left alone.  Don’t be afraid to question or voice discomfort over the level of care you are receiving.  The rest of the evening was uneventful.