Firstly, HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone out there in Blogland.
May 2005 hold as many promises for you as it does for me now.
Ok, the update you've all been waiting for (whoever you are out there):
I went into Jefferson University Hospital in center city Philadelphia on Monday, December 27 at 9:30am and had surgery performed on my right kidney from about Noon until 6:00pm. I thought I'd be out for an hour or two....I had no idea I'd be out for SIX HOURS!
When I woke up from the anethesia the recovery room was empty but for me and a nurse to make sure I was comfortable. She kept me pumped full of morphine (which I stopped when I went to a room since morphine makes me ill) and when I was wheeled from one building (where the OR is) to the other (where the rooms are) through a cross-bridge over the streets of Philadelphia, it was dark out! Of course it was dark, it was 6pm, but in my mind I had just nodded off for a minute. The last thing I remember was being prepped in the OR staging area....I wasn't even in the OR when they sedated me, so going from a breezy, chilly, bright morning being wheeled to the OR it was more than a little disconcerting to have it be so dark being wheeled back.
I got settled in a room (alone, thank goodness as I never get good roommates, it's always someone who can't talk and I have to call the nurses for them when they fall out of bed trying to escape at 3am or they have a hearing problem and listen to the TV at un-godly levels until their family shows up to visit for 5 hours and they all try to talk on top of one another in raised voices so as to be heard over the din of Murder She Wrote).
A private room; my first indication that things might go better than planned.
At midnight Monday they made me get out of bed (with 2 catheters coming out of my dangly bits and a nephrostomy tube still draining my kidney through my back, plus an IV drip in my left arm and oxygen tubes up my nose, burning the hell out of the back of my throat which was now raw due to the tube they stick down your throat during surgery so you don't choke) to go down to radiology to get a CT Scan taken (I knew they'd do it Tuesday but at 1 minute into Tueday at Midnight?! I guess if they're there they may as well get it over with ASAP).
After having the CT Scan I was still out of sorts because here it is midnight, or so I keep hearing, and on the radio in some of the halls was the Eagles game broadcast still going on. The Eagles still playing at midnight? I'm not a huge football fan but I seem to recall games ending far earlier, so I am unsure if it's midnight or Noon, and since all I have are people's words that it's midnight and the sun is nowhere to be seen it must be true. Turns out it was true, the Eagles played a late game that went even later.
The CT Scan was to check to make sure they got all the stone during the 6 hour surgery, if there was any left I was already still scheduled for the OR again on Wednesday, but turns out they got every bit of it and I got a clean CT Scan!!! No more surgeries!!!
So I had the scan done and I have to get off the gurney outside my room to get back into bed, again needing about 3 nurses to help me carry all my tubes and wires. Dr. Frankenstein would have been proud....He's Alive! Alive!! They then removed my oxygen since my blood-oxygen levels were good and I complained about how raw my throat was and the oxygen blowing through my nose right onto the back of my throat was making it worse.
One tube down, 4 to go!!
Tuesday morning comes and I'm running a fever, which I chalk up to all my body's been through and the activity of the night before; it won't break until Thursday morning, but by then I'm feeling much better anyway.
I had a normal breakfast Tuesday morning (something I never get when I'm in the hospital; real food!!). They then removed me from the IV drip as long as I promised to drink lots, which I did since there's really nothing else to do in the hospital.
Two tubes down, 3 to go!!
Tuesday's lunch was a chicken pot pie, which was quite filling coming shortly after breakfast (breakfast came around 10am and lunch around Noon) so I only nibbled on it. Now when the food came I started getting these wierd things happening; even though I had 2 catheters coming out of me I had the sudden (and intense) pressure and felt like I needed to pee, which I thought the catheters would relieve, and after a while the pressure seemed to subside without incident, but as Tuesday went on and Wednesday's lunch came I found it impossible to hold it in and all through Wednesday and Wednesday night into Thursday morning I peed myself 5 times. I was eventually able to predict the big ones and catch the escaping urine in a cup so it didn't get the bed wet, but it was destroying me mentally.
I just want to say here publically that nurses (and nurses aides) are actual angels, here on earth to care for people like myself who can't and they don't even bat an eye at the most menial task or normally disgusting bodily function gone awry. They always were quick to clean me and the bed and they always had a smile on their face or kind words of comfort to say. They are the ture unsung heroes of the medical profession. Doctors know they're something special and sometimes it works against them, nurses (and the aides) never think of themselves as special yet each and every one of them are; moreso than doctors in my opinion.
So with these new pains whenever food came around, I didn't eat dinner Tuesday or breakfast Wednesday, but Wednesday's lunch was delicious; a turkey sandwich on a crescent roll. Hospital food has gotten better over the last 9 years I've been in and out of them. Wednesdays dinner was a stuffed chicken breast with a baked potato & sour cream. Mmmmm......yummy. I wasn't even going to let wetting myself stop me from enjoying the dinner, though I did have to wait about 10 minutes to eat it since I peed myself as soon as it came.
Wednesday morning they take the nephrostomy tube out of my back and bandage the hole up as best they can, but I've had that damn tube in for over 14 weeks and it's a hole right into your kidney, so it's not going to heal like an IV hole, and it leaked all Wednesday and Wednesday night, but come Thursday morning it had closed and dried up.
Three tubes down, 2 to go!!
Being that it was now dry they finally took the most horrible of all drain tubes invented; the Foley catheter & the stent that were coming out my (not so) Mr. Happy. Two tubes, one hole that things are supposed to come out of....not go into!! I know the exact feeling of ecstasy & horror at the same time every time they take one of these things out. It hurts so damn much but it's the best feeling to have it out of you for good!
I am told to drink lots of water, which I do and by 2pm Thursday I peed enough that I am officially discharged. I call my folks to come pick me up (it takes them about 45-60 minutes to drive down from Levittown to center city) and by 3:30pm I am on my way home. Now, I've only had the catheters out for a few hours by now and they've been in all week so my bladder doesn't have the control yet that I'd like so the entire ride home I'm worrying about peeing in their new car. I make it home without incident (thank God that I-95 was moving and not a parking lot as it usually is around 4pm).
I've been home now for 2 full days and I cannot feel the golfball (that's what the stone felt like) that was in my back for most of 2004 and I still have the 14-week induced fears of checking to make sure the nephrostomy tube/bag are not caught on anything when I get out of my bed or the chair, though that's passing now. I showered for the first time in 14 weeks yesterday and boy did I miss it, and need it! Mom & Dad swear I didn't smell but a sponge-bath can only get so much grime off you and that's all I was really allowed while having the tube in my back, but to stand under warm running water with actual soap covering every inch of your body is a feeling I never want to forget again.
So now, I'm clean, in a lot less pain, and in better spirits than I have been in in a very very long time.
Last night was bitter-sweet, I got to say good bye and good riddance to 2004 (which took my best friend from me on January 13th & gave me a year-long struggle with a large stone in my kidney) and hello to 2005, a New Year with no stone and a year-out perspective of being friend-less.
I look forward to what 2005 has to offer me.
1996-2004 were not banner years for me. I look forward to getting back to work and the usual grind of everyday Life and the ability to go somewhere if I want to instead of being house-bound and physically restricted to doing anything.
I got a clean slate
Ok World, let's see what you've got to give me now !!!
RobMac
