Everything really hurts you guys. I mentioned yesterday that I’m on 4 different pain meds at the same time, all with their own fun side effects I have to deal with. My recovery feels so debilitating right now because I can’t even adjust myself in bed without causing a lot of pain for myself. My body is exhausted from healing itself and putting up with the pain. My mental state is also exhausted from how much I’m enduring with recovery because it takes so much patience with how slowly it takes to even sit up from a laying position in bed.
Seriously, inpatient chemo was a walk in the park compared to this post-surgery time.
At night, my oxygen levels dropped to about 74% so they woke me up and put an oxygen tube on me, asked that I take deep breaths to get back to normal, and attempt to cough up the built up crap in my lungs
Here’s my weak attempts at coughing.
At about 3pm yesterday, I noticed that my left arm was very swollen and started to become sensitive. Nurse Emily took a look and said that my IV had infiltrated meaning that the tip of the needle pushed through my vein causing the saline solution and fentanyl to go into my arm.
They had to call 3 separate IV teams over the course of 4 hours because each nurse wasn’t able to successfully put in a new IV.
The first two got the IV needle in halfway, then pushed the skin on top of the needle trying to maneuver it into my vein. That was agonizingly painful to the point that I was sweating a ton and had to tell them to stop and take a break
The last IV nurse got it in but blood started trickling down the insertion point and I got blood on the bed, this one hurt too.
Since it was a 4 hour window between finding out the IV wasn’t working and getting a new IV put in, I have no idea how many hours I was going without the pain killer fentanyl which is what gets put in me when I push my little button.
Sleep has been a double edged sword for me. While I’m sleeping, I’m not feeling any pain but I’m also not pushing the button on a regular basis to get fentanyl in me. When I wake up either one hour or four hours later, I’m in extreme pain where it hurts to breathe or move my arms to adjust myself. I have to push the button, wait for the 10 min cool down period, and push it again until I’m at a point where the pain spikes aren’t there anymore.
My teeth have been chattering and hands slightly shaking when the pain starts creeping up. I only experienced it once on my first day of recovery, today the tremors have been ongoing.
I woke up around 4am this morning with Nurse Sue checking my vitals. I told her I was in a lot of pain and she helped put me on my left side with a pillow under my back to support me. It was good to finally not lay on just my back but I still had the feeling of someone stepping on my chest from the side which caused shortness of breath and pain. I managed to knock my drug button onto the floor which was out of reach.
The morning rounds for the doctors started promptly at 6:45am. The pain team came in and discussed switching me onto oxycodone and weaning off the fentanyl and epidural medication. They checked the epidural site as I was complaining that it was hurting my back when I shift my weight while I’m lying down. They discovered that the epidural needle had removed itself at some point in time over night. The benefit that I’ve been getting from the epidural was that it was numbing the right side of my chest and back to where I didn’t feel the chest tubes but now that the medication was wearing off, I was having a harder time breathing.
The pain team ripped the epidural dressings that were keeping it in place on my back which hurt because the adhesive was so strong. They then suggested that the amount of fentanyl I’m getting should be doubled to balance things out.
The surgical team came right after and said that they wanted to have my catheter and one of my two chest tubes removed. I don’t remember if I mentioned it before but the chest tubes helped remove blood and an excess of natural lung lubrication.
They inspected the dressings and this is what the tubes looked like.
Nurse Emily prepped me for catheter removal. She said it shouldn’t hurt because young guys don’t have enlarged prostates but it will feel really weird because it’s shoved up my pee hole about 6 inches. My brain couldn’t process what was about to happen so I couldn’t look or be bothered to take pictures (not that you want to see that anyway). She counted to three and pulled it out. It felt so gross having it being pulled out of you, like a slimy worm, or just a strong gush of pee needing to come out immediately. That wasn’t a fun experience but now that I’m off the catheter, I need to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.
My nurses then had me turn over on my left side so they could prep the removal of one of the tubes. It hurt so so much laying on my side because I couldn’t breathe and my right arm needed to be placed slightly awkwardly to not be in their way. They had to be very careful about being sterile as I could get an infection in that area. My dad stood in front of me holding my hand and stroking my shoulder while they snipped 3 stitches holding one of the tubes in place.
The nurse said to take a deep breath and hum while she pulled the tube out so she knows that I was exhaling at the same time. As the tube came out, it felt like a slimy worm was wrapped around the front of my chest. It caused me to cough a bunch and they immediately started making the hole airtight to prevent infection. The whole process felt so long and my teeth were chatting because of how much I was hurting.
Every day I need to meet a walking quota. I felt strong enough in the afternoon before dinner to walk without the wheeled podium and just rely on myself. Kimberly and I walked about 50 ft and I started getting light headed and dizzy. A nurse was keeping an eye on me and grabbed a wheelchair to bring me back to my room.
I was put in a chair with a nebulizer to help open up my lungs and an ice pack for my incision because it was hurting too.
Soon after, my dinner came but I realized that I hadn’t eaten much today likely because the pain meds have been reducing my appetite and causing me to have really bad dry mouth.
I made an attempt at eating some very dry grilled salmon and a bit of chicken from a bowl of chicken noodle soup. My body wasn’t having it since I’ve been dealing with cotton mouth, I called Kimberly to quickly get me a puke bucket. The only one she had within arms reach was about the size of a dog food bowl.
Puke just projected into the bowl which caused it to splash back in my face and onto my body.
This has not been a good day at all you guys. Having to adjust to the new symptoms brought on from different drug cocktails and enduring surgery has been so hard. I’m afraid of how I’ll handle things when I get discharged to go home.
