Merry Christmas!!

Last night was another miserable night in the hospital. At least they didn't forget my pain medication, but the nurses were working half shifts so there always seemed to be someone new attending to me. I also had my drain filling up like every hour and then they came in around four in the morning to draw some blood and take out my catheter. In the morning I was finally able to shower for the first time! They had to cover up the IV in my neck that was still in and they also had to cover my port that still had an IV connected to it. It felt good to have some hot water finally pouring down over me!

Before the shower DH and I tried talking to each other several times before he left with the kids for a 9 a.m. Sacrament Meeting. I felt a little nauseous with the breakfast that was brought to me and didn't end up eating very much of it. I got a little emotional about everything that was going on and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it was because DH was doing a good job managing the kids and taking them to church. He even got up early and made them some cinnamon rolls in a can for breakfast and had M&M help with the girls' hair. I think I was also a little emotional because they were so short staffed with their nurses and aides that the aide just showed me where the shower was and left me to myself to manage on my own - even though this was my first time up and showering... I think I was also emotional because I was missing my family - here it was Christmas morning and I wasn't home to be with my family.

The physical therapist came by again and wanted to walk with me but I reminded her that we hadn't done stairs yet so she said she would come back after my shower and we would go do some stairs. After my shower we walked over to the stairwell and the therapist had me walk up a flight and then back down. It wasn't too difficult for me so the therapist thought i would do just fine at home.

After lunch my surgeon's assistant came by and said everything looked good for me to go home whenever I was ready!! How exciting!! They just needed to take the IV out of my neck and then they needed to go over all of my checkout instructions, which included how to empty and take care of my drain. They took all of the tape off of my incision site and it was really stuck on there good! It took quite a while to remove it and then it was all red and covered in sore spots from the tape. The nurse came in to remove my neck IV and she had to remove it and then hold pressure on it for the next ten minutes. Then I had to lay there in the bed for an hour so the hole would close up. It ws a pretty good size IV.

When I called DH to let him know I was going to be released that afternoon, we debated not telling my parents and just showing up there at their house. Unfortunately my parents called me before we came to a decision so I told them that i had been released so we discussed what to do for Christmas dinner. We decided that my parents would bring the dinner over to my house and cook it there and then my sister's family would also come over and we would all eat at my house.

DH came around 3:00 to pick me up. I got dressed into clothes for the first time since Wednesday and then it took us a while to pack up all of my things. DH also had to run down to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions. When we were finally ready, the nurse got a wheelchair for me and we left the hospital! This was also my first time outside since Wednesday. The whole thing felt surreal and like I wasn't quite ready for this yet! The car ride home was uneventful and by the time we got there my parents were already there starting on the dinner. We pulled up into the driveway and DH and the kids had put a welcome home sign on the garage door. DH had printed it out before he left and the kids colored it and wrote some cute personal messages on it while he was at the hospital picking me up! It was very sweet!

As soon as we pulled in the driveway, Kitty and MJ came out the front door to greet me. Kitty ran straight to me and wanted me to pick her up. Unfortunately I can't pick up anything heavier than 10 pounds for the next 4-6 weeks while we wait for my body to heal. DH juggled the things around in his arms so he could pick her up and she just threw a screaming fit because she didn't want dad to pick her up, she wanted me to. We came inside and he set her down on the couch beside me, but she wasn't quite content with that...

Up to this point my kids haven't opened any Christmas presents and it took us a few minutes to decide how we wanted to do it now. We finally decided that we would let them open the gifts from my parents and their Christmas pajamas from me and DH after dinner and then we would do the Santa gifts and other family gifts Monday morning. DH just likes the idea of the kids sleeping and waking up to their Christmas gifts in the morning.

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!

I think I actually got a little bit of sleep last night. It's so hard trying to find a comfortable position and it just hurts to move at all if it involves my stomach muscles. I forgot to mention in my last post that when I am laying in bed they have these things that I wear on my calves that blow up like a balloon every 30 seconds or so. It alternates and blows up one leg at a time. It is supposed to help keep the blood flowing through my legs and hopefully prevent any blood clots from forming.

I took a little bit of nausea medicine last night and today. I haven't felt really nauseous, I just want to prevent it from getting any worse. My swelling has gone down some today and I can actually open my eyes all the way. The nurse took some tape off of my left wrist last night from where I had an I.V. or something during the surgery and it is all blue and bruised underneath. This morning the nurse heard me coughing some because of my cold and offered to attach a humidifier to my breathing tube so I could breathe a little easier.

I've been a little frustrated with some lack of communication that appears to be going on between the different people that are taking care of me. My main surgeon's assistant came in and took a look at me today and said that everything was looking really good and that since I was feeling fine I should be able to move up to solids today and have anything I wanted to eat. She also said that I should be able to have my catheter taken out because the epidural was up high enough that it shouldn't be interfering with my bladder function. Less than an hour later I had lunch brought into me and it said on the food order on the tray that it was a clear liquid only diet again! I was not too happy when I saw that and I mentioned to the person that brought it in that I had just been told that I could move up to a solid food diet. She said she would check with my nurse and then she came back and said that I could move up to a full liquid diet - which means some thicker solids like tomato or chowder soups and pudding. So a little bit better than what I was initially given, but still not terribly appetizing!

The surgeon's assistant also asked me when I was thinking I would like to go home and I said that it would be nice to be home for Christmas Day, but I also didn't want to rush anything and was okay staying there if I wasn't quite ready. She said that we would have to see and that it depended on a whole chain of events taking place. (Switch to oral pain meds, cap off the epidural, make sure the oral pain meds were enough, remove the epidural, remove the catheter, transition to solids, remove the IV from my neck.)

Around lunchtime my mom went over to watch MJ and Kay so DH could come spend a few hours with me. I feel like I'm not very exciting company at this point though because I'm still very tired and can't move around much at all.

I was able to get up several times today and I even made a lap around the whole floor once. There are some nice big windows at the end of the hallways and it was a nice view looking out of some of them (my room is on the 10th floor).

DH left before dinnertime so he could eat with the family and then bring the kids back to see me for the first time since my surgery. My sister also stopped by with her family and they brought me a cute little Christmas tree with some homemade popcorn garland and ornaments on it. Everyone that came in after that commented on my cute Christmas tree. That afternoon before my sister got there they decided to give me two more units of blood because my counts were still low.

After dinner my kids came to visit me! DH was holding MJ and at first she didn't see me, but once she did her face completely lit up! She started saying, "Mommy, Mommy!" I had decided to be seated on the couch when the kids came by instead of the bed so that they could sit next to me and hug me a little better. DH came over to me and set MJ down on the couch next to me and she was content to just sit there snuggled up by my side. Amazingly she didn't try crawling all over me and pulling or poking at everything I was hooked up to. Kay was also very excited and she was very interested in what everything was that I was hooked up to and what all of my owies were. Then once she was finished asking me questions she decided to explore around the room trying and get into everything that she shouldn't be doing. My parents came just right after my family and they enjoyed watching how happy MJ was just sitting there with me. The family wasn't able to stay too long because of MJ and Kay being pills, but it was good seeing them all and letting them see me so they could see that I was okay. It was also nice being able to talk to the older kids and ask them about their last few days of school. We discussed if the family would come by on Saturday and visit me and discussed possibly having M&M come over and spend a few hours with me by herself. We'll have to see if we can work something out so that can happen.

They tried having me get up a little yesterday evening. I got up and got my legs hanging off the side of the bed and then I felt really nauseous and had to lay back down again. I slept horribly last night. Someone came in at least once every hour to do something to me and there were so many noises going on - toilets flushing, doors closing, machines beeping. I also couldn't find a comfortable position for my back and neck... One nurse came in a around 4 in the morning and said "good morning" and turned the overhead light on! He had come in to draw some blood for lab work and I asked if he could just use my port so he checked with my nurse and found out that they could, so he left the stuff to have her do it.

Both surgeons came in to on check on me in the morning and they both said that things went really well during the surgey and that I was looking really good. I asked my main surgeon if they could take out the IV line going into my neck but she said not yet in case they need to give me more blood. Iwas able to get up in the morning and transfer to a chair to sit in for a while. It felt good to be in a different position. I then had all different sorts of therapists come in and talk to me about different things. One of them was a respiratory therapist who brought a small breathing machine that he taught me to use to help strengthen my lungs after the surgery. He had me do it a few times and then said I needed to try and do it 10 times an hour while I am awake. Then he said he wanted me to cough as hard as I could. I didn't want to because I knew it would kill me. I finally did though and since I still have a bit of a cold, it was a loud, horrible sounding cough that made me have to cough a few more times. He said that that was good because it would help prevent pneumonia in my lungs.

The nurses in the morning asked if I wanted to clean up a little in the bathroom today, but I didn't feel like I was up for it yet. They did bring stuff to me so I could brush my teeth though.

For lunch I was able to eat chicken broth, jello and some Italian shaved ice. I then got up and walked a little down the hallway. The physical therapist walked with me and she helped me put my shoes on to walk in. Apparently my feet are pretty swollen because she had to loosen up the laces a ton before they would fit on. I was pretty tired again most of the day, but the swelling has gone down some. My parents stopped by with some flowers in the morning and then DH spent a good chunk of the rest of the day with me. One of my neighbors stopped by and chatted with us for a while which was really nice. Dinner was some beef broth with jello and more shaved ice. The beef broth tasted totally salty so I complained and they brought me some more chicken broth instead.

We had thought about bringing the kids by to see me but decided to wait until Friday. Instead he left a little earlier so the kids could talk to me and see me through Skype. I think that MJ especially is having a hard time with me being gone.

The hardest and most painful part for me is just getting up and down because of the stomach muscles that are used. I still have the epidural in for my pain meds and because of that I have a catheter in my bladder and an oxygen tube in my nose. I also have to keep a blood oxygen sensor on the pointer finger of my left hand (which makes it difficult to type).