Thursday was, by far, the worst day of my life. I'm not joking.
I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything, even water, all day, because they don't want you puking it up and choking when you're under general anesthesia.
Also, hospitals aren't the most user-friendly institutions out there. We spent so much time waiting to be called, in various waiting rooms around the hospital, and they don't care if your broken ankle is throbbing because it's not elevated because you're sitting on one of their waiting room chairs, nor do they care to give you a wheelchair rather than make you crutch your way through the halls and elevators, with your heavy cast dangling and your dehydration headache making you all confused.
Tom had to leave at 11 am to go to work, which in some ways was the worst part of the whole day, besides right after surgery, which was scheduled for 3. I was so thirsty and sweaty and sore and scared and frustrated that I cried a little after he left, feeling pretty sorry for myself, but then stopped when I realized I was losing precious fluids in the form of tears.
I will skip the part where I waited for what seemed like fifty-eleven more hours, skip the anxiety, skip the part where the anesthesiologist put the IV in the wrong spot on my wrist and I almost passed out, skip the freezing OR, and just mention two things: one, that a very dear friend showed up later that morning after Tom left and helped me get through the afternoon, and two, that waking up after surgery was the worst thing I've ever gone through.
I've never been in that kind of pain. My whole body was writhing, my jaw chattering, I could barely breathe. Some smart nurse wrapped a warm blanket around my head which cut down on the sudden sensory input of the recovery room, but with the oxygen mask roaring in my ears, unable to get a full breath, and the unbelievable pain in my left leg, I felt unhuman.
My sister-in-law Anne was there immediately, like an angel, patting me and saying soothing things to me that I couldn't hear past the oxygen mask and my chattering teeth. It was she who got the nurses, who were utterly unconcerned with my fate, to start the morphine drip. Anne felt like my only link to the world. She stayed with me, even after Tom got there when he was done with work. I am incredibly grateful to her.
A nurse later told me that when she broke her humerus, the pain of the surgery was worse than all three times she gave birth.
The surgery was supposed to take three hours at the most, but it took five. Nobody, including my surgeon, would tell me why, he just said they wanted to do a really perfect job.
You can't sleep in a hospital, even when you're all drugged up on morphine, because the nurses are always in and out, the hallway is noisy, and they won't close your door. Plus there was construction going on outside my window all night. I couldn't wait to get home the next day, even though my pain was still high, just to get some peace. I got in bed at 6:30 last night and didn't get out till 9 this morning.
The only cool thing about the hospital was my Foley catheter, which they stick in your urethra, which means you don't have to get out of bed in the middle of the night to pee. Getting up to pee at night is one of my pet peeves. Although, when I think about being passed out under anesthetic, in a room full of male surgeons and residents and nurses, and having someone stick that tube into my urethra in front of everyone, I feel pretty embarrassed. Ashamed. Silly of me, but still.
This was a truly traumatic experience for me and two days later I am still feeling pretty horrid. The healing I had over the last two weeks has been obliterated. I am back to the beginning, and this time it hurts even worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment