Kimberly chiming in again! Andrew’s first night after the surgery was a bit rough. My Dad stayed overnight with him but neither of them had much sleep. Because Andrew has been laying in bed at a 30 degree angle, gravity does its work and he slides him down the bed and bunches the sheets behind him. As a result, my Dad spent the night adjusting his pillow and trying to pull the bottom sheet into a better spot. When he slid too far down, the nurses had to lift up the bottom sheet and set him back down further up the bed. With all the shifting and moving, the imbalance gave him a lot of nausea and caused him to vomit several times through the night. By the time Joanna and I arrived in the morning, Andrew was in a slightly more stable state. We sent my Dad back to the hotel to take a nap and rest up from the night before.
To celebrate Canada’s weed legalization today, Andrew decided to join in on the fun!
Just kidding, what he has here is a nebulizer. It’s a device that turns a liquid medication into a mist so that it’s easier to inhale into the lungs. In this case, this medicine will help expand Andrew’s lungs. For a point of reference, the average male’s lung capacity is 6 liters of air. Andrew’s current lung capacity is 1.1 liters. In order to help expand his capacity, he uses a volumetric exerciser. Multiple times a day, he’s tasked with inhaling as much as he can to fill his lungs with air. The little dial will mark how how far up the meter goes.
As we progressed through the morning, Andrew slowly gained more energy. His pain level was still quite high so we had a visit from the pain medication doctor. They were able to increase his medication dosage rate to help relieve some of the pain coming from the side incision and chest tubes. He’s got a little button that he can push every 10 minutes that will release the drugs. The doctor also commended on his “stoicness”, so I guess he really isn’t experiencing just a man cold. Side effects that have been caused by his current pain meds are: nausea, ringing in the ears, metal taste in the mouth and itchiness.
With some of the pain subsided, Andrew was able to sit up a bit more and hang out for a bit. Today’s featured film was Zootopia. No spoiler today, but I will say that scene at the DMV is probably favorite part.
The nurse later recommended that Andrew give walking a try. The more he can get out of bed, the better. With his first try, he was able to get on the scale that was just outside his door, then back to bed. But with the second walk, he was able to walk to the other room that was across the hall. Look at that smile!
As the day continued, most of the pain seemed to be very manageable. The hospital gave him this cute pillow shaped like a pair of lungs to hug when has to cough. The more he can cough, the better it gets all the icky stuff out of his lungs and through the chest tubes.
Having had open heart surgery myself, I found similar relief in hugging something to help reduce the pain. What do you think, do we look like siblings?
If you can’t tell by some of the pictures, Andrew’s hair is really coming in! Joanna described it to look like an ostrich head but soft like a baby’s hair. He’ll be grown a mullet in no time!
When evening rolled around, Andrew’s pain was in a good place. The only thing that was really lingering and getting worse was the itching. A doctor was able to prescribe him Benedryl, which knocked him out cold in a matter of 20 minutes. I was glad to see him get some sleep that was more than a 25 minute doze but because he was asleep, he wasn’t able to push his pain meds button every 10 minutes. When he woke up after 2 hours, his teeth began to chatter as if he was immensely cold. Andrew lightly joked that maybe he was already experiencing withdrawals from the drugs, which the nurse seemed to actually agree with. We’ll have to set up some kind of process where the nurse or my dad presses the button more often to help avoid the pain shock when he wakes up.
I’m really happy with strides Andrew has already taken with his recovery. The hope is tomorrow he can get one of his IVs removed and eventually ween him off of the other things he’s hooked up to. We’re all looking forward to the additional progress set for tomorrow!
