Surgery in a nut shell: multiple needles in back and hand, unconsciousness, less unconsciousness, vague sounds of panic, sting in hand, more unconsciousness, recovery room, sitting up on ward, being told not to sit up, more sitting up, regaining feeling, many Disney films, stair climbing techniques for the crippled, attempted murder (or gross negligence) by staff members, much crying, escape, ok-ness, much pain, less pain, frustration! The rest of the post will try to explain this process in a slightly more coherent way...
So after a couple of days of feeling sorry for myself I decided it was time to try writing to see if it would help get past the frustration! I am currently being held hostage by a hip to ankle foam and plastic brace which is unbelievably warm and stops me from bending my leg (possibly the most painful thing in the world for someone with EDS) however the actual wounds look pretty good!
Right, starting at the beginning, we arrived at the hospital at 7:27 ready to go, by 8:45 I had seen the surgeon (who announced he may want to do a different procedure after all and would it be ok if he decided once he had a look around-sure why not!), anaesthetist (who informed me that there was no chance that a morphine PCA machine would give me enough pain relief so could he do a spinal block which involved injecting various drugs including morphine between vertebrae in the middle of my back in the hopes that my legs would go numb) and the porter had arrived to get me to surgery. I quickly changed without having the standard pre-op blood pressure check and wandered upstairs to theatre. Once there the needles began, first the canula in the back of my hand then six injections of local anaesthetic into my back (after an absolutely freezing cleaning liquid which was by far the worst part of the spinal block). Then it was the actual block along with six more shots of local as I process the drug way too fast! After this it was the fun floaty pain killer that feels just like the happily spiny stage of drunkenness and the evil white anaesthetic and the funny tasting oxygen mask.
In theory the next thing I should remember would be waking up in recovery but there was a brief moment in the middle of the surgery where there was awakeness and slightly panicked voices (unfortunately my eyes were taped shut and the paralytic was still working otherwise I would have asked to have a look!) followed by actually waking up in recovery where I sat for an hour sipping water and chatting to nurses. Kindly they had transferred me from the operating trolley to a ward bed before I woke up so I wasn’t faced with the indignity of getting to the ward and attempting to transfer from one bed to another in an open backed gown dragging a mutilated limb behind you!
After that it was 24hrs of standard ward life, I got there and was met with the evil blood pressure machine (which showed I had very low blood pressure and meant I was forced to lie down for half an hour until the top number hit 90!). Then I had lunch and chatted to the hip replacement in the next bed until I got visitors J after visiting hours there was a brief period in which the other patients had dinner before the visitors came back (my parents brought me dinner as I hadn’t been on the food list for Wednesday as patients don’t generally wake up hungry-unless they are me!). This was followed by a night of watsapp, Disney films, morphine buttons and 2 hourly blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and oxygen saturation checks from the night nurses. At 6am my catheter was removed (something I am still mourning, it’s just so convenient!!!) and I was introduced to the new style bed pan which was such a success I got up and got myself walking so as never to meet the satanic devise again!
Around 2pm I went for physio (learning how to do stairs...again!) then down to x-ray. The trip to x-ray was the major disaster of the hospital experience! We got down there and I was parked in my wheelchair waiting to go into the room, an idiotic tech tried to impress his colleagues by walking out of a door and down the hall backwards without looking and walked straight into the back of my chair (which had the brakes on) jolting me forwards and causing the chair to buck. He then moved me (to a position where my leg was sticking out into a walkway) and set off down the hall laughing about it. A nurse then walked past guiding her patient and collided with my leg. Needless to say by the time I got into x-ray I was a sobbing mess but I got up and moved around because x-rays = home! On arriving back on the ward I was given some painkillers and discharged (on the grounds that if they give me oramorph in hospital I have to stay for observation but if I waited until I got home I could just take it!)
So that was the hospital experience, got home and everything calmed down, until Saturday afternoon. After several hours of agony I randomly stood up and announced that the bandages were coming off right now (having decided that I needed to check what was going on to see whether I really did need an ambulance or if I could fix it myself) with help from my family I managed to escape the brace and bandage only to find a cotton wool bandage completely soaked through with blood and moulded to the side of my leg. The hit to the leg had ripped the smaller of the two wounds open and it had bled through the dressing, inch thick cotton wool dressing and bandages then dried forming a solid and sharp mould that was sawing into my leg and pulling to the side. Having washed down and re-dressed the leg I was back to feeling pretty good, although still incapable of doing anything much for myself I had at least figured out how to stand up without help by the end of Saturday.
Sunday has heralded the ability to get into and out of bed and dressed entirely on my own as well as intense frustration at the inability to bend my leg. I am currently experiencing a different and very irritating type of pain that only occurs when you keep a joint, or in this case several, in the same position for several days. It’s a pain that ebbs and flows but is very hard to relieve without changing the position of a leg you cannot move!
So what have I learnt from the recovery experience? Well I am very stubborn and want to do everything myself-a problem when I was not actually able to get into or out of bed on my own! There is no pain like the pain of set dried blood digging into you and the post op process is equal parts frustration and comedy.
There have been plenty of comedy moments, mostly involving turning on the spot and attempting to adjust my position without moving. There have also been plenty of moments of frustration, needing help to get into or out of bed, stand or sit and change the position of my leg (the surgery has taken the ability to lift my leg on its own requiring either me or someone else to lift the offending limb into position as I move the rest of me-comical and frustrating!
So there is the surgery experience, here’s to recovery! I can’t wait to get into physio and starting to get this lump of a leg back to a useful limb. I may still be waiting for my real life to begin but at least I’m one large step closer. On Tuesday I will aim to start walking outside with the goal of making it around the block by my wound check on the 6th Feb. The hope is that if I continue to heal well I may graduate to the relative freedom of a range of movement brace meaning I can begin physio!!! Fingers crossed!
Oh, I forgot to mention earlier! I have a rather suspicious pain in my hip with extensive bruising around the joint and a rather large hand print bruise on the upper thigh of my good leg. I’m guessing they were having a play and accidentally dislocated my hip... wish I’d been awake to call them on that one-then again maybe I was?!
So after a couple of days of feeling sorry for myself I decided it was time to try writing to see if it would help get past the frustration! I am currently being held hostage by a hip to ankle foam and plastic brace which is unbelievably warm and stops me from bending my leg (possibly the most painful thing in the world for someone with EDS) however the actual wounds look pretty good!
Right, starting at the beginning, we arrived at the hospital at 7:27 ready to go, by 8:45 I had seen the surgeon (who announced he may want to do a different procedure after all and would it be ok if he decided once he had a look around-sure why not!), anaesthetist (who informed me that there was no chance that a morphine PCA machine would give me enough pain relief so could he do a spinal block which involved injecting various drugs including morphine between vertebrae in the middle of my back in the hopes that my legs would go numb) and the porter had arrived to get me to surgery. I quickly changed without having the standard pre-op blood pressure check and wandered upstairs to theatre. Once there the needles began, first the canula in the back of my hand then six injections of local anaesthetic into my back (after an absolutely freezing cleaning liquid which was by far the worst part of the spinal block). Then it was the actual block along with six more shots of local as I process the drug way too fast! After this it was the fun floaty pain killer that feels just like the happily spiny stage of drunkenness and the evil white anaesthetic and the funny tasting oxygen mask.
In theory the next thing I should remember would be waking up in recovery but there was a brief moment in the middle of the surgery where there was awakeness and slightly panicked voices (unfortunately my eyes were taped shut and the paralytic was still working otherwise I would have asked to have a look!) followed by actually waking up in recovery where I sat for an hour sipping water and chatting to nurses. Kindly they had transferred me from the operating trolley to a ward bed before I woke up so I wasn’t faced with the indignity of getting to the ward and attempting to transfer from one bed to another in an open backed gown dragging a mutilated limb behind you!
After that it was 24hrs of standard ward life, I got there and was met with the evil blood pressure machine (which showed I had very low blood pressure and meant I was forced to lie down for half an hour until the top number hit 90!). Then I had lunch and chatted to the hip replacement in the next bed until I got visitors J after visiting hours there was a brief period in which the other patients had dinner before the visitors came back (my parents brought me dinner as I hadn’t been on the food list for Wednesday as patients don’t generally wake up hungry-unless they are me!). This was followed by a night of watsapp, Disney films, morphine buttons and 2 hourly blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and oxygen saturation checks from the night nurses. At 6am my catheter was removed (something I am still mourning, it’s just so convenient!!!) and I was introduced to the new style bed pan which was such a success I got up and got myself walking so as never to meet the satanic devise again!
Around 2pm I went for physio (learning how to do stairs...again!) then down to x-ray. The trip to x-ray was the major disaster of the hospital experience! We got down there and I was parked in my wheelchair waiting to go into the room, an idiotic tech tried to impress his colleagues by walking out of a door and down the hall backwards without looking and walked straight into the back of my chair (which had the brakes on) jolting me forwards and causing the chair to buck. He then moved me (to a position where my leg was sticking out into a walkway) and set off down the hall laughing about it. A nurse then walked past guiding her patient and collided with my leg. Needless to say by the time I got into x-ray I was a sobbing mess but I got up and moved around because x-rays = home! On arriving back on the ward I was given some painkillers and discharged (on the grounds that if they give me oramorph in hospital I have to stay for observation but if I waited until I got home I could just take it!)
So that was the hospital experience, got home and everything calmed down, until Saturday afternoon. After several hours of agony I randomly stood up and announced that the bandages were coming off right now (having decided that I needed to check what was going on to see whether I really did need an ambulance or if I could fix it myself) with help from my family I managed to escape the brace and bandage only to find a cotton wool bandage completely soaked through with blood and moulded to the side of my leg. The hit to the leg had ripped the smaller of the two wounds open and it had bled through the dressing, inch thick cotton wool dressing and bandages then dried forming a solid and sharp mould that was sawing into my leg and pulling to the side. Having washed down and re-dressed the leg I was back to feeling pretty good, although still incapable of doing anything much for myself I had at least figured out how to stand up without help by the end of Saturday.
Sunday has heralded the ability to get into and out of bed and dressed entirely on my own as well as intense frustration at the inability to bend my leg. I am currently experiencing a different and very irritating type of pain that only occurs when you keep a joint, or in this case several, in the same position for several days. It’s a pain that ebbs and flows but is very hard to relieve without changing the position of a leg you cannot move!
So what have I learnt from the recovery experience? Well I am very stubborn and want to do everything myself-a problem when I was not actually able to get into or out of bed on my own! There is no pain like the pain of set dried blood digging into you and the post op process is equal parts frustration and comedy.
There have been plenty of comedy moments, mostly involving turning on the spot and attempting to adjust my position without moving. There have also been plenty of moments of frustration, needing help to get into or out of bed, stand or sit and change the position of my leg (the surgery has taken the ability to lift my leg on its own requiring either me or someone else to lift the offending limb into position as I move the rest of me-comical and frustrating!
So there is the surgery experience, here’s to recovery! I can’t wait to get into physio and starting to get this lump of a leg back to a useful limb. I may still be waiting for my real life to begin but at least I’m one large step closer. On Tuesday I will aim to start walking outside with the goal of making it around the block by my wound check on the 6th Feb. The hope is that if I continue to heal well I may graduate to the relative freedom of a range of movement brace meaning I can begin physio!!! Fingers crossed!
Oh, I forgot to mention earlier! I have a rather suspicious pain in my hip with extensive bruising around the joint and a rather large hand print bruise on the upper thigh of my good leg. I’m guessing they were having a play and accidentally dislocated my hip... wish I’d been awake to call them on that one-then again maybe I was?!
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