Early Morning Reflections

Well, I'm up and awake at 3:45 AM. Hospital time, I guess. Had to get up for a walk, came downstairs for something, and the walk was invigorating. Oops! My pain meds should kick in soon, though, and I'll get back to sleep! In the meantime, I thought I'd do a little blogging!

My recovery has been going extremely well! This photo was taken Thursday morning, after I got to take a shower! (These milestones are a big deal, people!) This is in my room, and includes the white board the nurses use to communicate with the patients. Northside is big on that, and they did a wonderful job! It included the names and phone extensions of my nurse and her tech, when my next pain medication is due, when I needed to walk next, and anything else important! I really enjoyed my stay at Northside Hospital, as much as one can enjoy being in the Hospital. I'd never stayed over night in a hospital before, but the staff on 4C did an awesome job of keeping me comfortable and encouraging me to get up and move! So grateful for the fabulous nursing staff!

With my recovery, my only set back was that, after the surgery, I was unable to urinate. You'd think that wouldn't be a big deal since I also was not allowed to drink even a little swallow of anything, but they were pumping me full of IV fluids! It gets pretty uncomfortable. They did a scan of my bladder around noon on Wednesday, and figured I had just under 300 cc's in my bladder. They gave me more time to pee on my own (tried running the shower, sitting there forever, thinking about waterfalls...), but to no avail. So, around 3PM, they gave me a "straight" catheter. That's a one time catheter as opposed to a long term one. BOY, was I grateful! They got out 600 cc's of fluid, and man, did that feel better! Similar scenario kept me up in the middle of the night Wednesday, as I still couldn't go on my own yet, so another catheter around 4 AM gave me 700 cc's of relief.... and then, I could get comfortable and happily went back to sleep.

It's weird. How does one forget how to pee? I mean, with 37 years of practice, you'd think no problem, right? Apparently, it's pretty common after surgeries and after having a baby. Well, for Thursday, on my communication white board, one of my patient priorities was listed as "go to the bathroom" (apparently the nurse didn't want to write "I want to pee!" on there as I suggested), and, eventually I did. Ahhh, relief!

Well, my pain meds are kicking in now, so off to dream land I shall go. More later about my recovery and hospital experience!