My brain is finally my own again. If I ever had any inkling to start abusing triple signature narcotics, this little round about with Mexafen (?) has cured me completely. I was very glad to have it the first 36 hours after surgery, but it became more a problem then a solution by Friday night. I was nauseous, lethargic, and sedated. I know that was kind of the point, eh? On Saturday morning, the nurse turned off the constant drip, and left me with the self-medication route. I could get 1mg every 20 minutes, which equaled the 3mg an hour drip I had on Friday. I was a little miserable on Saturday—I was quite fearful that I wasn't going to get enough, and yet I didn't want the drip back. There was the additional Toredal (?) that I was getting via IV a couple of times a day so I knew there was a back up; I felt stupid asking for it after the consult that resulted in a cutback of the painkillers. Sort of rock and a hard place. When the anesthesiologist came in to check on me Sunday, I discovered that I hadn't needed it, and I was going to be fine without it. I asked him to just take out the epidural completely because Dr. B had dangled in front me of the chance to go home that day. I was more than ready. Friday night when Dr. B came in to do round, N, my day nurse decided that it was the particularly nasty clear liquid diet that was making me sick (not to mention the narcotics). She went to Dr. B and lobbied for me to go on a whole food diet, and he relented. After all, I could always go back to the liquids if it didn't work.

Saturday and Sunday I got about 5 of the worst meals I have been served in my life, and I've eaten a lot of airplane food and stayed in a lot of hospitals. I say 5, because when I called the dietician on Saturday AM when I got toast and cereal for breakfast, to remind them that I required a Gluten-Free meal, they didn't serve me lunch. Flat out skipped me. Fortunately J brought me the best milk shake I ever had in my whole life—it was fabulous, and not just because I was hungry! The meal time regimen went like this. I would be served the horrendous meal that they deemed suitable, I would eat a little of it (and I mean VERY little), barf up that, then have Susie bring me something good. A waffle, an apple, some good soup, etc. I was tolerating food, just not hospital food! I pointed this out to Dr. B on Saturday when he came around, hence the offer to go home. I had met all of the requirements to go home by noon on Sunday (poop, pee and walk sufficiently). I had been telling everyone that I was going home that day, in hopes that by repeating it to enough people that it would come true by sheer force of will. Hey, it worked. {g} I also had to get out of there to get some sleep! Dang! I have low blood pressure normally, and with the amount of narcotics in my system, when they would wake me up in the middle of the night to take my blood pressure it would be what they considered dangerously low. That meant they had to take a second reading with the manual cuff not the automatic machine in order to get a more accurate reading. Lights, worry fussing. I had to remind them that 97/60 is a pretty normal range, so 80/40 wasn’t THAT low!

The weekend nurses, OMG. I had a very surly older woman as my PCA on Saturday and Sunday, and she was scandalized that I didn't want to go take a spit bath on Sunday, or have her change the sheets. "No, I'm going home." She huffed off like I was an idiot. After all, she had broken the controls on my bed Saturday when she changed the sheets. I had to camp out in a chair for hours while they brought down a new bed, replaced the old one, and made up the new one (and this on 0 drip on the painkillers). The weekday nurses were very good, and were all over me like white on rice.

Oh the funniest thing happened. Sunday, a cute little 20 something chickie came to my room, to give me some information about what a Gluten Free diet is. I thanked her, and told her that I had been adhering to a GF diet for nearly a decade, and that I had it pretty well under control. I guess they heard me screaming at them from the third floor! Everything I was served was absolutely bland, dry, and tasteless; the menu card had a disclaimer on the top that read "this is a gluten free diet, your choices may be limited" and I would yell "only by your imagination!" I don't think my roommate M appreciated mealtimes very much.

Poor M. In her, I had a graphic example of how badly things could have gone wrong. She was also one of Dr. B's patients, and when you sleep next to someone for 4 days, you kind of get the gist of what is happening. She had ovarian cancer as well, but she was diabetic, and had gastric reflux and a nasty bowel obstruction. She was on a full liquid diet (that included milk and pudding stuff too), but they were unable to do anything except surgery. She was going downhill fast; or else I was becoming cognizant of what was going on at a fast rate. She started throwing up one day, and the smell was bad, like shit. I remember sister S telling me a story about a man with a bowel obstruction, and he started throwing up things that had been rotting far far down in his alimentary system—that was pretty much the end for him. Once they start vomiting that stuff, they are usually so poisoned they never recover. I had to call the nurse for her a couple of times; she was in such distress that she couldn't reach the call button. They were going to do surgery in the following week, and she had a little visit on Saturday from a Gastroenterologist. J was there to give me the Milk Shake From Heaven (Shakey's, really) and it turns out that the G-man that Dr. B had recommended for M was an old friend of J's from high school! The thing is, Dr. B had offered me a referral to a G-man that he considered the best in the city; this is the one that other Gastro guys go to when they need information or help. A real top dog. So, Dr. Guido, J's best friend is likely to be my new Gastroenterologist if Dr. B has anything to say about it. It really is a Small World here in many ways.

Now, in regards to my rant about the food and weekend help at BMC, don’t get me wrong—I really felt that the level of considerate care and professionalism there is quite high. I just won't rely on them to feed me if I have to go back! I had anything I needed and the majority of the nurses and PCA's were extremely competent. Hey, I had a male nurse, too. Nice guy, he had the night shift from 11 to 7. The day nurse on Thursday and Friday, N was British and she was from Brighton I believe. I'll have to ask S if she remembers. The other nurse that stands out is the recovery room nurse, C. She had a sister named Shellee, and after I came around about 4:30pm C pretty much talked to me for a solid hour about not very much, but it was an interesting therapy. She had a nice voice, and she sounded very encouraging and reminded how well I was doing and how proud of me she was. I finally woke up enough for them to think it was ok for me to see visitors (I guess I asked) at 5:30pm. J, S and Boy Unit all came back, (K had left a little earlier) and they stayed for a few minutes, and talked to me, hugged me, kissed me. It was a profound experience waking from the dead to something like that.


So, I've been home about 10 days, and every day I feel a little more like myself. It took just about that long for the aftereffects of anesthesia and the epidural to wear off. I am only a few days away from the 2-week ban on driving to be over, though I doubt I'll be going very many places. Brother J has been here since the 19th, doing things around the house. He fixed the front screen door so it would close properly, repaired a leak under the sink, got me a drill, made a shelf and repaired the door on the bathroom cabinet and in general made lots of nice things to eat and kept me company. Although I felt guilty laying about and not doing very much while he was buzzing around. His family is going camping this weekend, so I'm encouraging him to go home on Thursday. He's needed there and he's wearing me out! LOL

Brother D is coming on Saturday, and staying to the following Sunday. It'll be good to see him, and perhaps we'll have a chance to get out a little and do some sightseeing. I'm frankly starting to go stir crazy. Aunt J is coming after that, and sister S will come on the 17th or so. I'll be busy entertaining people for WEEKS.

I watched a few movies this week. Boy Unit brought me Young Frankenstein, Buckaroo Banzai and 2010 on DVD, and managed to leave the Ocean's 11 DVD, too. That was a pretty clever movie. I watched all of them thoroughly—the Young Frankenstein DVD had a lot of scenes that had been cut from the movie, copies of adverts for the film, and a documentary about the making of the movie. I really enjoyed that; it was all quite fascinating. I've even considered going to Block Bluster, paying out Chris's massive late fees and renting a few more movies I haven't seen. Never mind that I have about 20 books to read, and about 20 books on tape, about 5,000 photographs to scan and two stories to write. One is a short Smallville piece for a round robin, and the other is a far more ambitious project. It revolves around a story from the late 1800's and the development of the Canadian rail system, and the odd psychic connection that a contemporary character has to that story, and his story about writing that story. I have plenty of time to work on it; I just have to decide how historically accurate I want to make the B story. I could make it a 20-page knock off, and damn the facts; or I could take 50 pages and weave some real stuff into that. I have spent the last 6 months honing the characters in my head, and building them from scratch, so it could stand on the characterizations alone. But as tempting as that might be, I have a feeling I'll end up going for the more historically accurate story. Give me something to think about.

When I first came home I had to take some Darvocet or Vicodan every few hours, but now I'm down to only one or 2 a day total. I had thought that if I came out of this with as small a problem as an addiction to Vicodan, I would be thrilled, but I'm pretty sure I won't have that problem. I've built up enough tolerance to them that the one gives me no buzz, does the job, and frankly I'm tired of being sedated.

Right now life is as bucolic as it can get. I get up, eat breakfast, drink coffee, play on the computer, eat lunch, sit on the porch, watch movies and then go to bed to watch Star Trek at night. Sometimes I vary the whole thing by sitting on the porch in the morning, and playing on the computer in the afternoon, and reading in the evening. It's dogs' life I tell you.