I am now home.... I was finally discharged on Monday. Getting home was a massive high... this time my hospital stay involved living in a 4 bed room... you know your surgery is on the more low key side when you don't get your own room. Overall my "roomies" were pretty good. It is a bit funny when the nursing staff start calling you Radioactive girl or come and visit you when they hear your on the ward again (picture 11.30 pm visit and catch up by one of my favourite nurses from last time who was on the night shift and heard I was awake).
This part of my journey started on Wednesday the 21st, when I "reported" to the hospital.. they really do make it sound like your checking into a hotel.. report at reception..... on hindsight I should have requested a room with an ocean view and a king bed!
Since this was the big "good bye" to Judith, I decided to do this in a bit of style... I left a note for my surgeon (he's getting use to my badly timed sense of humour and long lists of questions).
Skip forward a couple of hours and I officially wake up in recovery - a Dyson (bagless).
Now the next few days (photos still to come as there seems to be a technical issue happening) involved acquainting myself with my roomies, being reunited with my old pole dancing friend "Baxter"... this time he was supporting both IV fluids and Morphine, drinking large quantities of fluids and discovering that there is a point where you actually can eat far too much jelly (try getting it served, along with a lemonade popsicle for every meal for 3 days straight!)... now the other thing that needed to occur was my body to decide to remember how to use the now fully plumbed large intestine... this actually takes time, and until then I was on the fluids only diet...
The human body is a pretty cool thing, it can do a whole heap of stuff... like start working in a functional manner after being sliced open, replumbed, parts left dormant, then resliced open and replumbed yet again, and then start to remember how to work all over again. Now for some people it takes a little longer to start working again normally (and there are some horror stories out there about this), thankfully my body has decided to work in a way that I'm pretty happy about.
So fast forward to now.... I'm now 1 week and 4 days post surgery. Things are working pretty well (better than I could have imagined to be honest), I'm still on painkillers and I still have part of my wound to pack (this is where the drain came out)... but I'm doing well. Time now to get better, heal fast and get myself ready for my next 'adventure' - Chemo.
Like everything that I've done and been through so far, I have learnt things along this part of my journey.....
1. the nutritional content and taste of hospital food leaves a lot to the imagination
2. that no matter how bad you think things are going for you, there is always someone out there having a worse time (sharing a room with a beautiful lady with terminal/ end stage cancer makes you appreciate what you have).
3. I'm still amazed as to how awesome a group of friends and family I have.... visits, txt, FB messages, phone calls etc... no matter what I know I am not alone.
4. some farts are not just farts
5. that some people really do need a good punch in the face (picture: 2 days of nil by mouth/ limited fluids other than a drip and ice water, a woman gets admitted to the bed opposite, starts complaining she's hungry, eats a full hospital meal in front of you, then calls her friend to bring McDonalds up to her.... proceeds to eat said meal - thankfully curtains pulled, but making running commentary about the meal. NB whilst McDonalds is certainly not the food I would choose to enjoy after a 'fast" the smell of chips and burgers is actually something rather magical after 2 days of fluids only... PS Punching people is wrong... what I should have said is that I wished her pubes would be infested by the fleas of a 1000 camels).
6. giving your beloved other half the opportunity to learn to dress your wound and pack it (saves daily community nurse visits and trips to the hospital), creates a rather happy camper (hmmmm someone was a little too happy to do this!.... there are a lot of in-house jokes about a scene from the movie Ted when this is being done).
Home is good.... I think I have chalked up enough hospital time lately... so I'm not planning on heading back any time soon.
RAG x
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