Day 18 – First tentative steps

Saturday 26th September 2009

I slept pretty well for a change. I settled down last night at 11.15pm and slept right through until I was woken at 2am to have my op’s taken. I had to ask for some morphine at 3am, then slept until 6.15am.

I was a bit stiff in the morning as I had to sleep propped up because of the lines dangling from my central line.

The night-shift nurses were so much better than on ward 43. The other nurses I wasn’t so sure about as I hadn’t spoken or had much to do with them.

The mornings were getting so boring. All I seemed to be want to do is sleep. Not easy when you had wires coming out of your neck…. Even doing my needlework cushion had lost it’s allure.

I was still having to take the high calorie drinks and also they had put me on a fluid chart, as apparently I wasn’t drinking enough. The hot drinks were horrible and the water undrinkable. Thankfully John had brought me some cartons of juice so I just drank them.

Andrew, the microbiologist, came to see me in the morning. They had established what germs were causing the infection. I asked if they were anything nasty like MRSA. He reassured me there wasn’t anything to worry about. I would stay on the IV antibiotics until Wednesday then hopefully go onto oral after that.

The physio's tried to get me up walking that afternoon. I didn’t do very well as couldn’t move my left leg and the right leg wasn’t strong enough to cope with the extra strain on it. I was a little concerned that they wouldn’t allow me home until I was able to walk on crutches, like the last time. Alicia reassured me that as long as I was able to do things for myself, they would arrange help for me to get around.

I was glad that my mam was there to see how difficulty it was for me to walk as she would have told me I was putting it on and not trying enough. She’s like that…

Kermit popped in to see me later that afternoon for a quick chat. I explained about the lack of movement in my leg but he said there wasn’t anything to worry about as it was still early days. I also mentioned that I was concerned about my wound leaking. He said that was fine and that this sort of thing happens. However the wound dressing would not be replaced as he was worried about infection. Apparently he did not allow the nurses to remove his dressings. Only he could authorise their removal.

Because I wasn’t very mobile, not only did I have to wear the pressure stockings, I had to have an injection every day to try and stop my blood from clotting.

They stab you in the stomach, which is quite painful, and the area where they’ve jab you stings for about 10 minutes. It also caused bruising so my stomach was black and blue. It matched my hands and arms….

Asked one of the night-shift staff nurses if I could have my catheter removed. Andrew had mentioned this morning that he would like to see if removed as it was another place for infection and that was the last thing they wanted me to get.

I thought it would hurt or be uncomfortable when it was removed but it wasn’t. Gosh, something that didn’t hurt !!!!