[posted retrospectively & not necessarily in order - 1st June, day after the op]
At some point in the afternoon I was moved to a semi-private room, where I shared with another girl. She'd just come back after developing some problems a week after tonsil surgery.
She proceeded to hog the TV remote control, stuck it on mute, then when Desperate Housewives came on later that evening I had to endure it at top volume (when she was discharged the next morning, the very first thing I did was grab the remote control from the side of her bed!)
I was still too tired & spaced to bother with resurrecting any sense of fairness over the TV availability, so I just plugged the iPod into my ears, and watched the moving pictures until Mum and Hubby turned up during visiting hours.
I still wasn't eating very much. I'd forced down a yogurt for breakfast, under great duress from stern-looking nurses. I accepted some soup for lunch, but couldn't get past one mouthful.
Don't get me wrong, I know hospital food doesn't generally have a great reputation world-wide, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety, tastiness and quality of the hospital food I was given. When my appetite did return I really enjoyed each and every meal. But for now, I just wasn't hungry.
At some point during the morning they emptied the vacuum pump on my surgical chest drain. Overnight it had sucked lots of blood & goo out of me, and I was now becoming more aware of this hose sticking out of the front of my chest. They kept calling it a tube, but it certainly felt like a ruddy great hose! And it was really starting to be a very sore pain-in-the-arse. I had a little clip on the container, so when I went off for walkies ( the nurses were adamant that I should be marching laps of the hospital on a very regular basis - what happened to rest & recuperation?) I could clip the vacuum container-thingy onto my clothing...and thus I could march about, with my lovely container of blood and goo on full public show, hanging off the lapel of my dressing gown...nice!
My surgeon came around at some point in the morning, to tell me how pleased he was about how it had all gone. He apologised for the size of the scar, but said it was as small as he could manage, given the size of the goitre.
Roughly every 6 hours, day & night, a vampire came visiting (different one each time) stealing lots of blood from my poor right arm, and disappearing off with a swish of their cape.
On the strength of these visits I was kept informed of the fact that despite being a Grave's Hyper patient my calcium levels hadn't dipped at all, but that they would continue to monitor them, We all concurred that this can only be due to the sterling work I had been doing with my Endo's Senior Registrar over the last few months, chipping away at my carbimazole dose, ever so slowly, so that for the first time in over 2½ years my blood levels not only come down into range, but had also stayed in range for over 6 weeks. My surgeon had explained to me that the more Hyper I was at the time of the operation, the more my calcium would crash as my body went into instant withdrawal. So thanks to Dr. R and his endless patience and gentle ways, we were pretty much as good as it gets on the day of the operation. But also many thanks to my surgeon, for having a steady hand and not harassing my parathyroid glands whilst he was in there digging about with his scalpel, as that was another common cause of a calcium crash.
Late in the afternoon new girl moved into the bed next door. She was brought in with stomach pains, and put on our ward for observation as there were no beds available on the general wards. We got on great, and came to a mutually beneficial agreement over the TV Remote. She made me laugh so many times, and listened carefully when my mother joined the nurses in nagging me to go walking. She made it her mission to take me off for random walks around the place, as and when she'd decided I'd been laying around too long. If you ever read this, and recognise yourself as that girl, well, thanks J, you were a star!
Meanwhile mum and hubby, when they weren't being doting relatives beside my bed, and listening to my alternating mumbling, croaking & whingeing, were amusing themselves between the 2 shifts of visiting hours, by shopping lots in the local shopping centre and sampling all the muffins in the coffee shops they found!
A friend of mine worked on a neighbouring ward, so she kept me sane too, by popping in whenever she got a chance to make sure I was OK and had everything I needed. She helped break up the long, slow mornings between drug rounds, vampire visits and blood pressure checks. Thanks N, you rock too!
And just for the gore-fans amongst you, here are some pics of my neck and chest drain, taken less than 24 hours after the operation...absolutely no idea what I had to smile about....I was sore, woozy, uncomfortable & grumpy - it must have been a morphine-induced smile, is all I can say! :)
At some point in the afternoon I was moved to a semi-private room, where I shared with another girl. She'd just come back after developing some problems a week after tonsil surgery.
She proceeded to hog the TV remote control, stuck it on mute, then when Desperate Housewives came on later that evening I had to endure it at top volume (when she was discharged the next morning, the very first thing I did was grab the remote control from the side of her bed!)
I was still too tired & spaced to bother with resurrecting any sense of fairness over the TV availability, so I just plugged the iPod into my ears, and watched the moving pictures until Mum and Hubby turned up during visiting hours.
I still wasn't eating very much. I'd forced down a yogurt for breakfast, under great duress from stern-looking nurses. I accepted some soup for lunch, but couldn't get past one mouthful.
Don't get me wrong, I know hospital food doesn't generally have a great reputation world-wide, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety, tastiness and quality of the hospital food I was given. When my appetite did return I really enjoyed each and every meal. But for now, I just wasn't hungry.
At some point during the morning they emptied the vacuum pump on my surgical chest drain. Overnight it had sucked lots of blood & goo out of me, and I was now becoming more aware of this hose sticking out of the front of my chest. They kept calling it a tube, but it certainly felt like a ruddy great hose! And it was really starting to be a very sore pain-in-the-arse. I had a little clip on the container, so when I went off for walkies ( the nurses were adamant that I should be marching laps of the hospital on a very regular basis - what happened to rest & recuperation?) I could clip the vacuum container-thingy onto my clothing...and thus I could march about, with my lovely container of blood and goo on full public show, hanging off the lapel of my dressing gown...nice!
My surgeon came around at some point in the morning, to tell me how pleased he was about how it had all gone. He apologised for the size of the scar, but said it was as small as he could manage, given the size of the goitre.
Roughly every 6 hours, day & night, a vampire came visiting (different one each time) stealing lots of blood from my poor right arm, and disappearing off with a swish of their cape.
On the strength of these visits I was kept informed of the fact that despite being a Grave's Hyper patient my calcium levels hadn't dipped at all, but that they would continue to monitor them, We all concurred that this can only be due to the sterling work I had been doing with my Endo's Senior Registrar over the last few months, chipping away at my carbimazole dose, ever so slowly, so that for the first time in over 2½ years my blood levels not only come down into range, but had also stayed in range for over 6 weeks. My surgeon had explained to me that the more Hyper I was at the time of the operation, the more my calcium would crash as my body went into instant withdrawal. So thanks to Dr. R and his endless patience and gentle ways, we were pretty much as good as it gets on the day of the operation. But also many thanks to my surgeon, for having a steady hand and not harassing my parathyroid glands whilst he was in there digging about with his scalpel, as that was another common cause of a calcium crash.
Late in the afternoon new girl moved into the bed next door. She was brought in with stomach pains, and put on our ward for observation as there were no beds available on the general wards. We got on great, and came to a mutually beneficial agreement over the TV Remote. She made me laugh so many times, and listened carefully when my mother joined the nurses in nagging me to go walking. She made it her mission to take me off for random walks around the place, as and when she'd decided I'd been laying around too long. If you ever read this, and recognise yourself as that girl, well, thanks J, you were a star!
Meanwhile mum and hubby, when they weren't being doting relatives beside my bed, and listening to my alternating mumbling, croaking & whingeing, were amusing themselves between the 2 shifts of visiting hours, by shopping lots in the local shopping centre and sampling all the muffins in the coffee shops they found!
A friend of mine worked on a neighbouring ward, so she kept me sane too, by popping in whenever she got a chance to make sure I was OK and had everything I needed. She helped break up the long, slow mornings between drug rounds, vampire visits and blood pressure checks. Thanks N, you rock too!
And just for the gore-fans amongst you, here are some pics of my neck and chest drain, taken less than 24 hours after the operation...absolutely no idea what I had to smile about....I was sore, woozy, uncomfortable & grumpy - it must have been a morphine-induced smile, is all I can say! :)
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