What the hell happened back there? (Part 3)

I've been trying to remember everything that I can from the surgery.  Just so I can get it down, and then I'm sure the memory will eventually fade.  So here's what I remember from last week.

(Note: This is Part 3.  If you want to read the previous entries, click here for part 1 or here for part 2.)

Saturday, November 14
When the nurses switched shifts on Saturday morning, I was assigned to another great nurse, who took excellent care of me.  I remember Dad and Jan still being there, and I think Ian showed up around 9am.  Sometime in the morning, the totally useless on-call plastic surgery resident Dr. No came by to check on me.  Seriously, she shouldn't have even bothered.  She didn't know that I had the hematoma operation, she didn't know anything about my case... basically everything she said, the nurse countered her.  First Dr. No said get up and move, then she said stay in bed.  The she said I could move out of the step-down unit into my own room, and then the said no, stay put. It went on and on like that.

I think the nurse sensed her incompetency, and paged Dr. Amir.  He showed up mid-afternoon, and gave helpful instructions.  Clear fluids were fine for me to drink, and I was to stay in bed all day.  Hurrah!  I wasn't able to even drink water until this point, so this was excellent news.  I was sooooo thirsty.  And not getting out of bed was fine with me - you read about what happened the day before when I tried to move.

The afternoon passed and more family and friends came to visit me.  I was pretty zonked, again slipping in and out of sleep.  I remember looking out the window with Ian and Mike, watching a crane lift air conditioner units onto the roof of the adjacent building.  Pretty exciting stuff.

In the evening, Ansley and Jenny kept me company, and when my nurses switched shifts at 7pm, the awesome Jaime was back on duty, with equally awesome Hirel.  Hirel gave me a sponge bath and got me all settled into bed, with Ansley and Jenny's help.  I was having a nice time with the gals until I started to cough a bit. 

I had junk in my lungs from lying still for so long, and I was encouraged to do little coughs whenever I could to break it up and get that stuff out.  But Saturday night, I had something in there that wasn't going away.  And coughing HURTS.  A LOT.  I was supposed to cradle my abdominal scar ("splinting", I think it's called) while coughing, but it still hurt.  So each time I'd cough, I'd push my morphine button.  But I think I did it too many times in a row, trying to clear my lungs, and before I knew it, I was stoned.

One of the side effects of too much morphine is limited breathing.  So I took too much morphine (too much for me, not actually too much - that stuff is capped), and then my breathing fell off.  Then I'd focus on deep breaths, to get my oxygen level back up, but then that would make me cough.  So then I'd take more morphine, and then didn't breathe right.  Soon, I was back on the little nose thing to make sure I was getting enough oxygen.  Not really uncomfortable, just annoying.

I felt all funny from the drugs, and I didn't like it one bit.  I tried not to panic, and just go with it.  Eventually I fell asleep.  But then I woke up in the middle of the night (late Saturday/early Sunday), and I remember being half-asleep, and thinking "what the hell is happening to me?"  I wondered where I was, what I was doing... I felt like there was a mistake.  That I wasn't supposed to be there.  I was disoriented and confused, and I had an overwhelming feeling of not wanting to be there.  I thought I could maybe close my eyes again and wake up somewhere else.  I couldn't believe that was actually my reality (stuck in a bed in the middle of the night in a noisy hospital).  This was the lowest point I hit in my recovery.  It's hard to describe - but it was terrible.  And all of this was happening in my head - I didn't say anything or do anything.  I just tried to go back to sleep, and desperately hope it would be over soon.

(to be continued)