Surgery experience

Surgery is over and done and here's a sort of capsulated account of my week.
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Incoming wall of text. Please keep arms and legs inside the moving screen at all time. If you find your eyes glazing over please stop reading immediately, go outside and breathe some fresh air before attempting to continue.

This PSA was brought to you by a drugged up Sharon who's sense of humor is slightly wonky atm.

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Monday:
Check in about 10am ... answer all sorts of inspiring questions like "Do you have a Durable Power of Attourney"? "Do you have plans in place and a person designated as your *voice* should you become incapciated or go belly up?" ... lol Things like that ... not necessarily designed to make you feel comfortable. Finished that thrilling session and we got sent to the waiting room. Now I'm getting a bit more nervous but am planning on being able to start up my mp3 and do some relaxing. No such luck. Called me in almost the minute we walked in the door.

I don't remember much of the surgery ... but because I had a spinal instead of general anethesia ... they took me to my room almost immediately it seemed. The rest of that day passed in something of a fog for me ... I'm sure it's because of the wonderful drugs. lol

Tuesday:
Started at 12am. Got woken up and told I had to roll to my right a little and they shoved a pillow under my left buttcheek ... my groggy mind was like "huh ... zzzz" 1am ... they wake me up again, tell me to roll to my left side and the move the pillow under my right cheek and now I'm almost awake enough to think wth?? 2am, they wake me up and move me to the right again and now they've got a cranky drugged up person on their hands. Apparenlty there's a new protocal that demands this rolling around exercise to prevent bed sores. Now come on really ... I've been in the bed less than 12 hours and they're worried about bed sores?? By 6am I was ready to rip someone's head off because they'd come in every single stinkin hour all night to do this!! I thought screw that and got permission from my dr to tell them bug off ... if they came to do it the next night.

So okay we have the bed sore thing taken care of but that only guarantees you sleep between midnight and 5am becaue 11:30 is shift change so they come through to update the incoming nurse with each patient. Then at 5am the lab comes in to draw blood, then 6am they come in to do vitals, then at 7am it's another shift change and 8am they bring you breakfast. Don't ever believe you'll get rest in a hospital.

Tues. also introduced the Matt/Matt, Matt/Tim, Matt/Jeff team(s) into the mix. They were the sweet and caring, diabolical physical therapists. I'm pretty sure I know now ... why most PT's are feared or disliked. They're the most cheerful and upbeat slave drivers in the world. The encouragement and smiles I'm guessing are supposed to cover up the mean streak that allows them to drive you past the point of exhaustion and frustration. First day on my feet I managed a whole 10 inches sideways .... took me about 5 shuffling steps to manage that much. (At this point I'm really REALLY thinking about hiring a hitman to come track down my surgeon for convincing me doing both knees was a great thing to do.) hahaha I got to visit with the pt guys twice a day. They quickly became the bane of my existence. hahaha

Tues. also brought out the CPM machine http://www.med1online.com/p-37472-kinetec-prima-advance-knee-cpm-machine-5614-80.aspx

Howard immediately dubbed it "the rack". lol It bends and straightens my leg for me to work on range of motion. It's nearly impossible (it seemed) to get both legs into the machine 100% aligned each time ... and if they weren't the whole process was just painful. (Or if your darling spouse takes advantage of you dozing off to bump it up from 50 to 65 over the course of an hour.) Got to enjoy the fun of that machine for 2-3 hours, twice a day.

Wednesday:
Wed. was actually a fun day. I got a visit from a gal with her therapy dog. A sweet Norwiegen Elkhound (spelling?) who's name I never did hear. We talked for about 30 min and I think I'm going to look into training our *cough* puppy Willow to become one of those.

Wednesday moring I also got the sleepy giggles because apparently the gal doing vitals that morning hadn't gotten the word I sleep with ear plugs. So she came in and started talking to me as she moved around the room getting things ready ... and I failed to respond. *goofy grin* I guess by the time she came over and gently touched my shoulder she was pretty freaked out. I felt bad but still it was pretty funny.

By this day I'm able to stand and manage about 3 feet forward in a slow, shuffling, old bag lady sort of walk with my walker. (Yes ... you heard me right ... I'm reduced to being a granny with a walker. hahaha) I've also reached the pinnacle of sucess!!! WAAAHOOOOOOO!!!! I can use the bedside comode (ie toilet) instead of the bed pan. You men have absolutely NO clue how impossible it is to pee laying down. Apparently my brain just isn't wired that way. lol

Thursday:
So the Physicians Asst. comes in to talk to me ... very kind manner but very serious also. Apparently I won't be going home today afterall because I need a blood transfusion. Part of the reason I'm so listless and weak (aside from the actual trauma of surgery) is that I'm very anemic and need 2 units of blood. Took the rest of the day to get that done.

I've now progressed on the CPM unit from the orginal 20 ... up to 70 (which is the degree of flex in my knee. lol The goal is to reach 110 by the end of therapy!) and I can walk forward with the walker about 6' now. I still can't get myself in and out of bed without help and that's a pain ... but things are progressing.

The physical therapist strongly recommends that I go to a care facility for the first few days before I go straight home because I'm just not as far a long as he'd like. So I take his advice and make plans to do that.

Friday:
Didn't sleep well Thurs. night which is always a bad thing for anyone who has to spend time with me ... ie the darling hubby. To top it off I had the day nurse come in while he was off getting coffee and tell me that I'm really slacking on the CPM and should be to at least 100 before I go home and I'm only at 70 so she cranks up to 80 and leaves. That's all it took to crash my spirits and send me back to Poorpitifulme City. Howard got back and found me wallowing in my pity party and backed the machine off to about 72 and then the phone rang. Talk about devine intervention!Thank heavens for online friends. :)

With spirits on the rebound, I get ready for lunch. Now I know the pt guys will be back about 1:30-ish so I decide to finish up the session on the rack. I always get sleepy that time of day so Howard (the rat) takes that opportunity to bump up the machine without me being aware of it. He took it from 70 to 95 and when it got there it woke me up because it hurt so much. I laid with my eyes closed, thinking "stop being a wuss" so I tried to ignore the stretching and bending agony but I couldn't. I told him to get me out of the machine. He tried to just back off the number and that wasn't going to hack it so I told him "get me out of it now!!" and hit my nurse call button. She came in and helped get me out of it ... I asked for the magic shot of dilaudid ... and told Howard "DO NOT WAKE ME UP!! EVEN IF THE PT GUYS COME." Stuck my ear plugs in and went to sleep and the pt guys had to wait almost 45 min to come torture me again. lol

I eventually got released and we headed for the SNF ... pronounced sniff and stands for Skilled Nursing Facility. It was anything BUT a skilled facility. :(

We got there and the first thing we were flabbergasted at ... was they had no clue who I was or what I was coming there for. Howard had already given them the paperwork from the hospital that stated I was a bilateral knee replacement patient ... yet the nurse that came out to help my out of the car apparently didn't know that. She brought out a wheel chair with no foot rests. We were like WTH??? So she says get me in the wheel chair and then she'll go get the legs.

Now we didn't even think to tell her both my legs were out of commission so I suppose we can't blame her for figuring I could manage better on my own, right? Anyway, the upshot is I ended up basically falling out of the truck into the wheel chair (Thank God I actually was close enough to the wheel chair to not land on the ground!) ... talk about something that made me want to scream.

So now we get inside and are treated to the next bit of skilled *cough* nursing ... they didn't know which room/wing I was supposed to go to. They finally sort of figure it out and off we go and the next thing this skilled person does is clip the corner of a doorway with the left foot rest. About this point I lose my cool and suggest she let me drive myself since obviously I'm better at it than she is. We get to the room and it's a cramped 3 bed room and I'm at the far end. I guess they figure putting me by a window makes up for the fact that I don't have a TV or an AC vent.

THEN ... we find out that the selling point of going was I'd get pt twice a day there ... where as at home I'd be getting it twice a week. Well ... apparently their pt's work Mon-Sat ... the first session is an evaulation only ... and they don't work Sundays or holidays. So lets look at this ... we checked in on Friday night ... my first session would be an evaluation Sat. morning ... then I wouldn't get any pt til Tuesday morning.

I ask myself, why would I want to stay in something that smacks of a seedy Motel 6 for 3 days waiting for my first pt session when I could be at home doing almost as much for myself? Answer was I wouldn't. So I pulled out the AMA card (against medical advice) and signed myself out.

Got home and found out in the middle of the night that my recliner is pretty darn comfy and I can use Howard's laptop from there. So I'm good to go!

However .... the CPM machine just got here and lucky me ... I get to spend about 8 hours a day on it. Which means lying in bed 4 hours at a time. 2 hours a leg, twice a day.

Sure am glad to be home, though!! <3