Christmas Eve!  It's seems weird being here over a major holiday weekend.  Last night was really, really rough.  I tried going to sleep a little earlier but just couldn't get comfortable.  My back just kept hurting worse and worse and I was contemplating pushing my pain button even though I hadn't needed to push it all day long.  I finally was able to get to the pain button and I pushed it and didn't hear anything happen - usually there is a noise associated with it that tells me the pump has kicked into action.  I looked over at the machine and the bag for the pain medicine looked like it was still completely full.  I quickly pushed the button for the nurse.  When the nurse came in he asked what was going on and I told him that I didn't think that my pain bag had been turned on.  He went over and looked at it and said, "Yeah, you're right.  This isn't even on." What looks like happened is that the previous nurse had changed my bag just before her shift was over and then never turned it back on.  We figured it was off for about 2 hours!  I was in such excruciating pain that I was in tears, crying.  The nurse offered me some other drugs that can be given to me at the same time as my main medication and I told him to just give me everything that he could!  Especially since I was told that the main medication can take up to 20 minutes to take effect.  It took me a little while to get my pain back under control and then it took even longer to actually be able to relax and get some sleep.

This morning I got up and took a little bit of a sponge bath while sitting in the bathroom.  I am not allowed to shower until my epidural is removed.  This was the first time I had really seen myself in a mirror since my surgery.  I actually didn't look as bad as I thought I would.  It felt really good to be able to clean up a little.  After I finished up in the bathroom a nurse from physical therapy came by to take me walking.  We walked a couple of laps and she said that I was doing really good and that the best thing I can do for myself at this point is walk as much as I can.  So I set a goal to walk a mile today - that's about 10 laps around my floor.  I did two laps with the physical therapist and then went and sat on the couch and ate my breakfast.

After breakfast I decided to go walking some more.  This time I did about 4  laps and then noticed that my legs in-between my thighs was really hurting - there was something rubbing there between them.  I discovered that it was a clip holding my catheter tube to my leg.  When I hobbled back to my room to check out the damage I found that I had cuts on the inside of both of my legs from where this had been rubbing.  I got ahold of my nurses' aide and she helped move the clip to the front part of my thigh and then put some bandages on the insides of my legs.  Then I went out and finished up my last half lap and added one more for good measure.  It felt much better having that clip moved.  On my way past my room one time I heard my cell phone ringing in the room so I stopped to answer it.  It was DH who had apparently been trying to call for quite a while.  I took the phone with me and talked while I did another lap around the floor.  I had called him last night about the pain medicine incident right after it happened so he already knew about that, but there was other info to fill him in on.  He mentioned that our relief society president wanted to come visit me at the hospital and had offered to bring M&M with her.  Then he could come later with the rest of the kids to see me and then take her home with them.  I thought that that sounded like a good idea.

There has been quite a bit of drainage from my drain and I asked the liver surgeon's assistant about it when she came in to see me this morning.  She said that the color on the drainage was really good and that I shouldn't be concerned at the amount at this point.

So the relief society president and M&M came over shortly after lunch.  She brought a basket of flowers and stayed to visit for a little bit and then left M&M with me.  I had M&M take me on a walk for those last couple of laps that I needed to finish up my mile.  We ended up doing just two laps and I did them pretty slowly and then I started to not feel so good so we headed back to my room.  After getting situated on the couch I noticed that one of my brothers had tried to facetime me earlier in the day while I was out, so I tried returning his call.  While I was talking to him the physical therapist tried coming in to take me to the stairs to practice doing some stairs when I all of a sudden felt nauseous like I was going to throw up.  I quickly ended my call with my brother and the physical therapist called the nurse for me.  I dry heaved a few times but nothing came up.  The nurse brought me some anti-nausea medicine and M&M brought me a wet washcloth to put on my forehead and then I started to feel better.

My surgeon's assistant finally talked to the nurses about getting my epidural and catheter out and switching me over to solid foods.  Hopefully something will happen with that before the day ends.

It was nice being able to sit and chat with M&M for the time that she spent there.  I'm just sorry she had to see me get sick liike that.  My parents stopped by for a few minutes again and then right after I was served dinner, DH brought the kids by to visit again.  (I had to fight for the dinner again because they tried to bring me a liquid diet again and they had to check with the nurse to find out if I could have solid foods.)  Unfortunately MJ and Kay were a little more wired and free feeling this time and preferred to be running around the place causing problems.  I finally had M&M take MJ down to the end of the hall where there are some clusters of chairs for families and some large windows to see if she could keep her quiet.  Kay thought it was fun to run up and down the hallways and we tried to stop her from doing that and disturbing the other patients on the floor.  Finally after DH and I were able to talk a little I tried getting MJ over to me to give me a hug and say goodbye, but she wasn't interested.  Then I offered her some of the food off of my dinner tray and she perked right up.  It turns out that she was starving and she absolutely loved the pudding that I offered her!  In fact the only way they were able to bribe her to leave without screaming was to take the pudding container with them with a plastic spoon to feed her with.

Just before DH showed up the nurse came in to give me some oral pain meds and then a little while later she capped off my epidural.  She had also contacted the anesthesiologist to see if he could stop by later this evening or in the morning to take out my epidural.  Luckily he was able to come by before he went off shift that night and it was a pretty quick procedure having that pulled out.  It felt good to finally be able to scratch my back without the fear of upsetting the placement of the epidural.  The nurse also offered to take out my catheter, but I am a little hesitant because that means that I will have to get up out of bed more to use the bathroom and I'm not sure if I'm ready for that!

Before I settled down for the night I took one more walk.  I got in a total of 1.5 miles before I finished for the day.  It felt good to be up and about walking around!