Friday, July 8, 2011

Surgery and Hospital Stay (Part 4-First Full Day)

What a long day this was. I was in and out of sleep. I was in and out of pain. I was in and out of nausea. It was a hard day! My mouth was super dry and I begged for something....anything to moisten my mouth. The had these sponge things on a stick and would wet them down with something that didn't taste very good but I didn't care. At one point, my sister-in-law said that a nurse came in and was swabbing my mouth and I started sucking on the sponge...Ha!...she said that my husband panicked and told the nurse to get that thing away from me...lol. He was instructed to make sure that I had nothing and I mean...NOTHING to eat or drink until they could do the leak test which would be over 24 hours after surgery. I will say, though, that I don't ever remember my lips feeling chapped and dry. I even bought a new chap stick just in case but never had to use it. 

Back to the sponging thing on a stick! Later, my husband was swabbing my mouth with one but it was barely wet and I was going nuts. I begged him to get it wet so I could make my mouth feel better. He was so scared I was going to swallow something. I promised him I would spit out any liquid that came off of it and I did just that! 

Now, I don't remember everything but I do remember that at one point one of the medications was having a bad side effect on me. I'm thinking it was the nausea medicine. This stuff made me itch like crazy. I couldn't stop itching. I was scratching in my sleep! lol The nurse told us that I wasn't having an allergic reaction but that it was simply a side effect of the medicine. As time went on, my brother ... I guess he left for a while....came back in and said he had gone to the gift shop and bought me a present. It was a back scratcher! The best gift ever! And I told him that that was the most awesome thing anyone could have thought of right at that moment. I put that sucker to good use. My sister-in-law was afraid I was going to scratch all my skin off.

So, on to the middle of the night! The machine that was connected to my IV in my right arm had continued to ring the alarm all through the day and into the night. Every time I would bend my arm, it would set it off. My poor husband was so exhausted from getting up, turning it off, and making sure my arm went back to being straight. Then the medicine that was making me itch was worrying my husband because I was scratching my skin so much. He told the night nurse that he thought it was time to try something else. Well, of course, this was a different nurse than the one we had during the day and she wasn't sure if it was my pain or my nausea medication making me itch. She stated that after both had worn off, she'd switch to something completely different on both. I was worried because besides the itching, they were working great. She never came back and both medications wore off!!! Of course, neither my husband or myself realized that I was about to start feeling really bad. 

By the time a new nurse came in for the day shift, it was time for me to take my leak test.

To be continued.....

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