Over the next few days things slowly improve. Gradually they remove tubes from me which does make you feel better. On the Wednesday the physio pops by and asks if I'm ready to get up? The answer is most definitely no right now. She's good as says she'll pop by again tomorrow and see if much has changed. The ward is fairly quiet but I've got a nice guy in the bed next to me. He's frustrated as he's not well but not 100% sure what's wrong and there doesn't seem to be much movement from the doctors on what needs to happen before he can go home. Over the next few days we chat a lot and the chatting seems to make the time fly. I stay in bed all of Wednesday as it feels too much to move right now. Eating and drinking is very difficuly as I have a pretty swollen stomach. Apparently it can be 4 to 5 days before your stomach starts working after this kind of surgery.
It's Thursday....
I'm awake early as usual and decide on some breakfast, I go for Weetabix and think that if I can manage one it might help me on my way to feeling better. I get through 1/2 and I'm full up!! The health care assistant says that's fine as Weetabix are fairly bulky. As it's now a few days since the surgery today is the day they are going to start winding down the drugs although I think the epidual needs stay until day 4 which is Friday so tomorrow.
The Healthcare assistant comes around again and it's time for me to wash and for them to change the bed. With great difficulty and with the help of the HCA we riase the head of the bed so I'm in a sitting position and then spin my legs so as they are dangling of the edge of the bed. I now make the move to stand up and somehow walk or collapse the several inches to the chair next to the bed. I make however I now know what it felt like when man walked on the moon as to me moving 4 or 5 inches to the chair felt like a much bugger achievement. I'm now sitting in the chair which does actually make me feel a lot better. I also think the epidural is working better with me sitting up as the pain seems to have subsided quite a bit. To test the effectiveness of the epidural every couple of hours the nurse or HCA pops by with a freezer spray and sprays it around your stomach and makes notes of where you can feel the cold. Ideally you won't feel any cold at all around the affected area however for me it was a bit hit and miss however the pain was beareable.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow now as that's when they tell me pretty much all of my tubes except the drain in my stomach can be removed.
It's Friday
Another nights rough sleep but never mind. I'm attached early as usual by the nurse for the usual set of tests, these being BP, Epidural effectiveness (freezer spray) and others. I try dry toast for breakfast which seems to be easier to deal with as I can eat it slowly. An hour of so after breakfast is when the doctors usually come around, this morning on the rounds is my consultant, Mr. Andreas Prachalias, he's a nice guy who really takes the time to explain what's going on. I'm surprised to see him as normally the doctor on the rounds is someone I don't know, anyway he heads straight for me and luckily I'm up in the chair. He doesn't like to see patients in bed as he says that the way to go home is to get out of bed and start moving. He come over and says good morning and the next he says good news despite my initial odds of the tumour being cancerous (about 85%) it seems that the histology report has come back and it wasn't in fact cancerous. Wow I wasn't expecting that and it's surprised me a lot, the next thing is relief! Mr Prachalias hangs around and talks for a bit with me and I of course thank him. He then calls the nurse and asks why I still have all these tubes in me and says to remove them all, cut back the drain, and hopefully plan to go home on Monday. So just the weekend now and I'm on the home straight. I of course call and text family and friends and tell them the good news and have a few emotional phone calls. The consultants visit was earlyish (around 830am) and over the next few hours my epidural is removed which means that 6 hours later the catheter can be removed, I wasn't really looking forward to either of these but in the end they were painless. So at the end of Friday I'm both cancer and tube free! I've also been visited by the physio again and we've built up on yesterday's getting out of bed and today I've walked down the corridor to the nurses station. It seems like a marathon distance when in reality it's only around 20 metres.
Saturday and Sunday
The weekend is of course a little quieter as far as doctors visits go and on Saturday I talked to a doctor I've not seen before. She's says it's all looking good for home on Monday and says the nurses and HCA can today cut back my drain tube and remove it tomorrow. When it's cut back it's no longer going into an airtight back but instead the tube is poked into a sticky bag that adheres to your skin. This was fine however it makes quite a lot of noise when you move about!
Late Saturday morning I'm visited again by the physio, I'm surprised at this as I thought they wouldn't work weekends but I guess it's a 24x7x365 workplace so they are needed all the time. She tells me that after yesterdays marathon walk to the nurses station today we are going to attempt stairs. Once you've done stairs they sign you off and this is apparently another tick in the box to going home. We walk to the stairs and despite being quite stiff after nearly a week in bed i go up and down the stairs which are quite a walk away and manage to return back to the bed without any incidence. The physio is happy with the progress and says that are happy that I can manage at home and are happy to sign me off.
On Sunday morning after the usual breakfast, doctors visit and wash the nurse and HCA come across and start to remove the tube from my stomach. The tube protruding from my stomach is fairly short (about 10cm) however when they pull it out it's probably around 50cm long which means there was a good deal of it inside me. They patch up the the whole left by the tube and say it will heal over in 2 to 3 weeks time and for the time being there's a big sticky square gauze stuck to it. This needs regularly changing as fluid is still leaking but slowly and surely the leak become smaller until it's pretty manageable.
No comments:
Post a Comment