Surgery Recall Part 2

I just want to take a couple of minutes and talk about SW Washington Medical Center. I had a great experience, all things considered, at this hospital. They were all very professional, very proficient and everything was efficiently run. They had procedures that they told us about then followed them to the letter, they always told you exactly what they were doing or going to do, when they were going to do and then did it. I was tracked, so to speak, on many different levels including a bar code that was assigned to me/on my bracelet. I got that bracelet as soon as I talked to the lady at the check-in desk! It was scanned before anything was done or any medication given. All of my nurses were good but I totally scored with the two I had starting at 7am on Friday - those two gals were the bomb! Anyway, I've heard stories of bad experiences in hospitals and wanted to let you all know that my experience was excellent!

So after the anesthesia wore off Friday night my next goal was to get home. I had a checklist of requirements to meet and that was what I focused on all day Friday. Joel too for that matter, each time I got another requirement done he reminded me that another was checked off the list. The list included removal of packing put in place during surgery, removal of catheter, going to the bathroom on my own and emptying my bladder, eating a little bit and keeping it down, able to control the pain via pills (wean me off of the IV pain medication), able to keep fluids going into me (drinking lots of water, juice, etc. to wean me off of the IV fluids) and able to be up and walking.

When I came out of surgery, I had a bunch of vaginal packing and a catheter. Around lunchtime on Friday, my doctor came in, removed the packing then the nurses came in and removed the catheter. My doctor decided to do a back fill of my bladder then I had 15 minutes to use the restroom. She wanted 300 cc's in and 300 cc's out. That way she could be sure that I was emptying my bladder. I guess during surgery if the bladder is bumped at all it can show it's unhappiness about that by not emptying completely. As I'm sure you can figure out on your own, this is not a good thing and can quickly lead to infection. Before the catheter was completely removed the nurses back filled my bladder with a sterile saline solution but instead of the full 300, at the 200 mark I asked them to stop. I felt full and knew that I could go and did as soon as I could get up out of bed. Problem was, my bladder wasn't empty to begin with...they put in 200 and I put out 550! So they went with plan B, after my next trip to the bathroom they did a bladder scan (looked like a mini ultrasound machine) to check for any fluid and there was none! Woohoo! By this time I had already eaten some food, drank lots of fluid, had the IV removed so my only task left to do was get up and walk around.

Joel had to leave for a while to go home and get Noah off of the bus and off to his destination for the night. Plus the poor guy had to have been bored to no end sitting by my bed. I am sure it was nice to just get out for a while and grab a bite to eat or whatever. For almost my entire stay at the hospital I had a room to myself but shortly after Joel left, I ended up with a roommate for about an hour. Let's see, how do I put this nicely, um, well, okay fine...that was not a pleasant experience at all. My great nurses came to my bedside and kept mouthing that they were sorry. They also whispered to me and told her loudly that she would have her own room within an hour, it was just being cleaned. Now, I'm not sure what she had done but there was lots of sobbing, crying, moaning and when the nurses asked her what her pain scale was from 1 to 10 she shouted, "A 20! A 20! Now give me something!" As if that wasn't bad enough I then had to listen to her and her husband/boyfriend fight about whether or not she should be allowed to use her cell phone, all the crap that he had to go through to get there to be with her and that she should be thankful that he was there at all, who should or shouldn't be allowed to visit and then more people showed up. A friend, a mother (I think) and God knows who else and our rooms ARE NOT BIG. They finally moved her and about two minutes after that some other friend of hers comes running into the room loudly calling out the patients name. I stayed quiet, it wasn't me they were looking for, but she still ripped back my curtain and demanded to know who I was and where the hell was the patient? Seriously, she is lucky that I had just had surgery and that Joel wasn't there. Needless to say, my nurses came rushing in after she was all moved and could not apologize enough for the chaos and swore it wasn't usually that bad.

So why do I tell this little side story...because it put off my walking around. I wanted to walk a bit in my room first then the hallways. I mean, if I was going to get light headed or nauseous or even go down for that matter I wanted it to be in my room, not out in the throws of a busy hospital floor. Once they left, I got up, walked about my room a bit, rested some, then got up and headed out for the hallway. They wanted me doing laps around the floor before they gave me the okay to go home. I knew that my doctor would be back by 5pm so it was my lot in life at that time to walk. So walk I did...well okay, I sort of did this shuffle walk with a blanket wrapped around me in case my gown decided to open while holding a small pillow against my stomach for comfort. I'm sure it was a thing of beauty! Oh and don't forget the hospital issued, gun metal gray, non-slip socks. Be-yew-ti-ful! But despite my beauty, I walked and got my walking papers!

To be continued...