Post Surgery (Alternately, NGS Gives TMI to the Interwebz)

Here's the truth about what happens after surgery.  My surgery was four hours long, done the day of the injury. I have three plates and countless screws replacing bones in my lower left leg.  That's all well and good, but here's the dirty truth no one ever tells you. I'm thinking of this as the equivalent of my birth story, although no one ever gives me enough details about their birth stories, either.

I remember going into the OR, having the anesthesiologist mock both Michiganders and the Detroit Lions (who were going to get their asses handed to them by the New Orleans Saints that night), having said jackass anesthesiologist put a mask over my mouth and I don't remember anything else until I woke up in my hospital room during the second quarter of SNF. After I ascertained that I was alive and my leg was still attached, I ask how the Lions were doing (badly).

Medication:  While in the hospital, I had an IV with some pain medication. I rarely used it because I would forget to push the button. When the physical therapist came in the room, I immediately hit it, though, because she wanted me to GET UP AND MOVE. I didn't like her very much at the time, but I learned a lot through our appointments - how to get up, use the walker, and do very practical things like get in and out of the car.

      For pain: I was on oxycontin while I was in the hospital and for a week when I got home. I took it twice a day at first and tapered down to just before bed for the last four days.  For the first week and a half, I took 5 - 15 milligrams of oxycodone every four hours depending on pain.  I rarely took 15, but did once in a while, especially at night.  I am on oxycodone still, 5 milligrams before bed.  I also took some before our car ride to the doctor yesterday, but I'm pretty sure I could have done without it.  I can take Tylenol every six hours as needed.

     Other meds:  I take aspirin twice a day to prevent blood clots.  Since I'm not super active at the moment, it's a risk. I'm also on birth control pills, which increases the risk. I really worry about blood clots, so I try to get up and about the apartment as much as I can tolerate.  I take a calcium supplement with Vitamin D to increase bone growth because my doctor is terrified about how soft my bones are*. I took a laxative for about a week when I got home because a side effect of the oxy medications is constipation.  I am still taking a stool softener because, um, it's hard to poop.  I have never in my life been constipated before and it sucks, maybe worse than the pain from my foot. Seriously.  I took an anti-nausea drug while I was in the hospital and I still take it occasionally when the constipation thing is bad. I am glad I tolerate the pain medication as I am quite comfortable most of the time, but I have never been in so much intestinal discomfort as I have been in the last three weeks.

Bathroom: My dear husband put in a new detachable showerhead with a hose before I got home.  He also purchased a TRANSFER BENCH.  If there is one piece of home health care that I had never heard of before this incident that I will never tire of singing praises, it is this bench. It allows me to get in the shower without worrying about my foot or falling down.  I am pretty well obsessed with it.
   
     Getting there: It's a pain in the ass.  I use a walker because when I tried to use crutches in the hospital, even the physical therapist was puzzled by my lack of coordination.  Crutches = me falling again, so I use the walker, even though it's slow as hell.  I spend most of my time on our recliner with pillows stacked up under my foot, so it's an agonizing process of moving the pillows, putting the recliner down, getting the walker ready, and then getting to the restroom. It can take ten minutes.  As soon as I stand up, all the blood rushes down to the injury site, causing swelling and pain almost immediately.  I dislike the process intensely.

     Using: My husband taped a styrofoam cooler shut and I use this cooler to prop up my foot while I'm doing my business.  Because of the constipation issues from the pain medications, I am sometimes in there for a while. Until very recently, I required my husband to help me do everything from sitting down to positioning the cooler to getting up again. I can now officially say that I can use the bathroom by myself now, but I found it all quite humiliating. Marriage vows say in sickness and in health, but they say nothing about using the restroom.

     Bathing: It's exhausting.  The transfer bench is awesomeness.  The shower head is pretty awesome, too. I could have bathed myself from the day we got home if I wasn't so tired and scared of hurting myself.  I still have Dr. BB stay in the bathroom with me, but he mostly just talks to me and fetches me things and makes sure our kitten doesn't jump in the bathtub with me (she likes running water, no matter how hot).  I have yet to shave my legs, but I think I have enough endurance to be able to pull it off the next time I shower.

Activities:  I had planned on reading, watching television, doing crosswords, writing cards and letters, and being cerebral and smart!  But, see, the words floated in front of my eyes.  I couldn't concentrate on 30 minute television shows without losing focus and having to ask for clarification on a plot line during an episode of How I Met Your Mother.  It's only been the last few days as I've taken less and less of the pain medication that I can stay awake longer than about two and a half hours.  I can finally read, but watching tv or movies is difficult.  The pain medication does weird things to you, people.

Sleeping: I sleep a lot, but that's not terribly unusual if I'm completely truthful. I slept in the recliner for the first two or three nights I was home, but then I moved to the bedroom. I switched sides of the bed with my husband so my bad leg would be on the outside of the bed (so I wouldn't whack him with my cast in the middle of the night) and we propped up my foot with about eight hundred pillows. My husband was worried I would kick the pillows off and drop my foot to the floor, so he rigged up our coffee table next to the bed with blankets and pillows so my leg would fall onto that.  I have never had to use the coffee table back up, but it comforts Dr. BB so he sets it up every night.  Secretly, it comforts me, too.  I have trouble sleeping, not because of the pain, but because I have extremely vivid nightmares.  I think those are side effects of the pain medication and I hope they'll go away when I stop taking it (hopefully by the end of this week or next).  I have yet to kick the boy while sleeping.

Pillows: While I was in the hospital, Dr. BB pretty much stayed with me from 7 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night.  This meant that he didn't have any time to buy pillows.  We only had the pillows on our couch and the two pillows on our bed at our house and that wasn't going to be enough. I was surprised when I went out to the car and found the backseat filled with brand new pillows, not entirely sure when the boy had the time to buy them.  He later confessed that he had gone to Walmart and purchased the pillows at midnight the night before, breaking our decade long ban on all things Walmart, damn it all.  These pillows are kind of crappy, I will admit, but do the job. We have seven of these Walmart pillows and I've only ever wished for more a few times.

Pain: The most pain was in the xray room before surgery.  Since then, I've been relatively comfortable in terms of pain.  But I am uncomfortable most of the time.  Yesterday my cast was replaced with a heavy, hot, pain in the ass boot.  I am constipated a great deal of the time.  I hate bothering my husband for food, so I am somewhat hungry a lot (although I'm starting to get better about just catching him when he's already in the kitchen to bring me food!).  And, probably the worst thing is that the rest of my body does not need to be immobile, so all of my joints and muscles are craving movement I just can't give it.  I spend a lot of time trying to get the rest of my body comfortable.

Eating:  I was too nauseated to eat anything while I was in the hospital. I would dutifully fill out a meal request sheet each day only to be horrified when it was delivered?  Why would I circle chicken broth?  What the fuck was I thinking? (Story from the hospital: My dear husband had gone to get a salad for himself for dinner.  When he started eating, I made him leave my room because it smelled too bad. Salad.  Dude, I was in a bad way.)  Two weeks to the date from the accident, I ate my first "real" meal. But, and here's where things are sad, I still don't have any cravings for anything sweet.  Our cupboards are filled with Christmas cookies, fudge, and other goodies people keep sending and I don't want any of it!  But, salt? Bring it on.  My friend visited and brought us some Doritos, which we would NEVER buy ourselves and I've been chowing on those.

Things that I regularly eat:   popsicles, hard boiled eggs, pudding, bagel with butter, peanut butter, or cream cheese, yogurt with granola, tortilla chips, crackers, prunes, bananas, various types of other fruit, prunes/craisins/other dried fruit and sherbet.

Things my husband purchased thinking I would for sure want to eat, but can't even fathom eating: ice cream, M&Ms, and Cheezits.  Someday I will eat them, I hope.

I don't know why I'm writing this. Mostly just so if someone googles "what happens to me after surgery" I can reassure them that I, too, needed help getting to the bathroom.

*Me too.  We will be discussing some weird genetic things at my follow up appointment in a month.