Hello everyone!  I hope everyone is doing well these days, I’m hanging in there myself.  In this post, I will tell you what it was like for me to recuperate in the hospital during my 29 day stay.  It felt like a lifetime!

So, let’s pick up from where the last post left off.  I told everyone about my ventilator experience.  Now, this is my time after waking up but still on the ventilator and completely off.  The first thing I remember when I woke up is these two male nurses talking in my room.  One worked at the hospital and another was a military nurse that was interning there.  I hadn’t opened my eyes yet so they didn’t know I was listening or was even awake.  They were each talking about their wives and what hobbies they liked doing together.  It was really sweet to listen to them talking highly about their wives.  All of the sudden, one of them starting yelling my name, thinking he was waking me up from being on the ventilator.  I didn’t open my eyes yet and I heard him tell the other, “She’s probably pissed off, I would be too if I had to be on the ventilator.”  I then opened my eyes and the both of them rejoiced!  They were giving each other a high five and asking me how I felt.  Of course, I still couldn’t talk because I was on the ventilator still but I gave the thumbs up.  They then started telling other nurses in the hallway I was awake.  They also stripped my bed sheets, stripped me of my gown, gave me a sponge bath, changed my sheets and I felt like a brand new person! By this time, I had no shame in male nurses vs female nurses.  All this happened about 4:00 in the morning.

In the following days, the Respiratory Therapist gave the nurse the thumbs up in getting rid of the ventilator.  That day, the doctors made their rounds and the RT came up to me and told me that he was following my case closely because his wife has ulcerative colitis and wanted to know what they could be facing in the future with her disease.  He then gathered the nurse and a technician and took out my ventilator.  They told me to take a deep breath in and while I was doing that, they were taking the ventilator out.  I thought I wasn’t going to make it, it was a scary thing to go through.  I couldn’t breath until the ventilator was completely out.  My mouth/teeth were heavily coated with some funky buildup that comes from having the ventilator in my mouth for 10 days, vomiting and not brushing my teeth since the beginning of the month.  I was pulling chunks out of my mouth that were caked to my teeth.  The nurse handed me a warm wash cloth to wash my face and then toothpaste and a toothbrush. When I finally got cleaned up, the nurses asked me if I wanted to call my husband at work.  They handed me the phone and I called – he was surprised!  I believe I called a lot of people that day – I finally had a voice even though it was soft and scratchy!

The remainder of my stay was very interesting and heartbreaking with many ups and downs.  The nights were sleepless.  They ended up giving me Amberen to help me sleep.  With all the bells and whistles that were going off at all hours of the night, there was no way this girl could sleep.  Also, there were many days that I was in there and couldn’t do my physical therapy because I had a problem with my heart rate.  I would just sit on the side of my bed and my heart rate would jump up.  Physical Therapy wouldn’t “walk” me if and when my heart rate was too high.  That meant my walking sucked.  I was so afraid I wouldn’t walk right again because I wasn’t getting enough PT.  I also had so many wires coming off me, it took 30 mins to get me into the chair just to sit.  The surgeon wouldn’t let me eat anything for a week after I got off the ventilator because he didn’t want to “wake up” my digestive system for all the problems we were having at the time.  One thing at a time.  The only thing I could do was put ice chips in my mouth and suck them out with suction before I swallowed it.  I wanted so bad just to swallow some, but I didn’t.  Didn’t want to wake up my digestive system.  The days were boring, I had never watched so much tv.  I couldn’t wait until Mark got off work so we could visit for a while.

One day, I had a nurse that made me so nervous.  She was older, and she talked my ear off and really didn’t pay attention to what she was doing.  She was trying to give me my call button and she accidently pushed a wrong button somewhere that signaled a code.  All the sudden I had all these doctors and nurses in my room looking at me and wondering if I was coding.  Also, she was draining my colostomy bag and wasn’t paying attention to what was going on and spilled poop all over my bed.  I was laying in poop!  The next day she was scheduled to be my nurse again and my night nurse had heard what she had done the day before.  She told me that I could request another nurse for the day if I wanted, so I did!  That other nurse made me feel anxious and there was no way I was having another day like I did the day before!

While in the hospital, I was fighting depression.  One big reason was my daughter, Isabella, was moving out and getting an apartment.  She was going to be a big college freshman.  Even though I was still in the hospital, it was time for her to move and start getting ready to go to school.  I was thinking that I, her mother, should be at home helping her pack and move.  Something that mothers and daughters do together and look forward to.  I would just sit in my chair in my room and look out the window and wish so bad that I could be with her.  Even though she reassured me that she was handling it and her father was helping her, it was heartbreaking.

I was so looking forward to finally going home.  When that day came, the surgeon came to see me for the last time in the hospital.  He was taking a look at my stomach, all of the sudden, he stuck his finger in some stitches and broke them apart creating a big hole in my stomach!  I asked him what the hell he was doing.  He told me he was afraid that those stitches were going to get infected so he wanted them to heal again.  So now I’m going home with a big wound on my stomach that I have to take care of at home.  I also had to go home with a foley catheter and a drain tube coming out of my stomach because I now have a hole in my bladder from the surgery.  Long story short, I had scar tissue that adhered my bowel to my bladder so the surgeon had to call the Urologist in to take care of the bladder part.  While healing, the hole appeared in my bladder.  I still have the hole to this day and still have the catheter and drain in.  That’s an ongoing problem I’m having now.  Hopefully I won’t have to go back into surgery for this.  Instead of my 2 day recovery, I ended up staying 29 days and I had to learn to walk again because I didn’t have much PT in the hospital.  I walked with a walker for about a month after being released from the hospital.  In the next post, I will tell you the trials and tribulations of being at home facing the uncertain.  Remember to take one day at a time and keep moving forward!

Chow for now!