Second and Third Day After Surgery

I just re-read my last post about my bad day at the hospital...sheesh!  Sorry for all the doom and gloom.  What a downer.  Since more than a month has passed, I figured it was time to finally finish telling my tales from the hospital.

Thursday was the day that I was originally supposed to go home.  I think I was moping a little bit on Thursday feeling sorry for myself rather than feeling a lot of actual pain.  I was still sore and adjusting to some changes in medication but overall was mostly just tired.  I did finally start eating some real food on Thursday which was nice because it had been 3 days since my last real meal. 

The excitement for Thursday happened when a random physical therapist came by.  She was very, verrrrryyy peppy and told me to get up because we were going for a walk!  No one told me that I would be working with a physical therapist but I figured she wouldn't have come if someone didn't order PT for me.  So off we went.  We walked 2 or 3 laps around the floor and I was completely worn out.  When we rounded the final corner on the final lap my eyes were set on the door of my room and I couldn't wait to get back in bed.  Right as I was just about to head into my room she stopped me and told me to hold on to a rail on the wall and do 10 calf raises.  I really didn't want to but figured it would take about 10 seconds and then I could lay down.  I got really dizzy and she was asking me how many I had done.  I told her 7 and she said, "are you sure?  I think you've only done 4"  I got really annoyed and said, "NO! I've done 7!"  Haha.  (sorry for yelling at you randome PT lady!) Then I told her I needed to lay down.  She said I first needed to do some weird ballet pointed toe exercise.  Then the nausea hit me like a ton of bricks.  I told her I was going to puke and she said to just finish the set.  I told her that if she didn't get me the barf bag I was going to just have to puke on the floor.  I somehow made it into my room and then immediately threw up.  She kinda moon walked out of the room and never came back.  The whole thing was very weird.

Thursday afternoon and night I snoozed quite a bit and was starting to feel a lot better.  I was eating crackers and jello like a champ.  I woke up at about 4:00am on Friday and couldn't go back to sleep.  My mom was sleeping in the guest "bed" which is really more of a chair.  Sometime after 6:00am she woke up.  Shortly after this she was handing me a cracker and tripped on the bed tray falling to the floor.  I pressed the button on my bed to call the nurse right away.  The nurse came in and helped my mom up.  In typical mom fashion she acted like it was no big deal and that she was fine.  They got her some ice.  Over the next few hours I noticed that she was wincing whenever she moved her arm.  She admitted that it was hurting pretty bad.  She made an appointment for that evening with her doctor back near her house.  The nurses (and I) convinced her that she probably didn't need to wait that long so they wheeled her to the ER in another part of the hospital.  If you happen to know my mother, you will not be surprised to hear that while she did have her cell phone with her, the battery was completely dead. 

Of course this was right about the time they were discharging me from the hospital. So my dad was running back and forth between the ER and my room trying to manage both patients.  We were both discharged within about 30 minutes of one another but my mom ended up having to sit on a bench outside of one building while they wheeled me out of another building.  I feel like they were playing a joke on me with the route we took to get out of the hospital in the wheelchair.  We passed right by a bank of elevators that would have taken us straight down and right into the lobby.  Instead we took two separate elevators, wheeled about 20 miles inside of one building and into another and ended our journey way way farther away from our car and my poor mom who had in fact broken her elbow. 

The car trip home wasn't too terrible and I was sooooo glad to be in my own bed.   First order of business: take a super long nap.

Home sweet home.