The daytime shift on Saturday felt that I needed to be weaned off hospital pain measures and start relying on oral medication like Oxy Tylenol, and Ibuprofen so that I could be released by Monday at the earliest.
The nighttime shift found that because I was at a 6-7/10 pain, they should use any means to deal with it so they increased the amount of fentanyl that was administered through my manual button press via my IV.
I woke up on Sunday morning with a lot of pain on my chest and upper back. It was agony trying to shift my weight, move my arms, or breathe deeply. The daytime nurses came in to do their shift change at 6 am and apologized because there was a mixup in communication on how the nursing staff wanted to manage my medication because I was only given Oxy at 3am.
Nurse Emily felt that it was time to remove my 2nd chest tube because it wasn’t draining anything anymore and the faster I could get rid of the reliance of hospital measures, the faster I could go home.
She had me lay on my side again to prep for tube removal. My skin was really sensitive to them removing the tape that kept the first hole sealed and the other tube in place. It just felt like sharp needles every time they removed a piece of tape. It’s hard to describe how this tube felt inside. It was almost like a stabbing pain on the inside of my chest cavity towards the right side of my back
She told me to take a deep breath and hum while exhaling as she pulled the tube out of my side. This one wasn’t as painful but it still hurt and felt really weird and slimy.
Within a few minutes, I felt like I could breathe better with less restriction.
Several hours later, they scheduled me for a chest xray to make sure nothing was damaged internally from removing the tubes.
One of the surgeons came in to review the xray and said everything looks great and they are really happy with the progression. This means that they’re comfortable with releasing me on Monday to go home.
Here’s a before and after from my very first one in June with the one now. If you look closely to the newest one, you can see the titanium wire they used to close up my rib cage.
On Monday morning the staff did their rounds at 6:45 and confirmed that I was being discharged. The nurse walked me through my medication that I was being prescribed as well as how they want me to take care of my incisions.
The physical therapy department wanted me to do one more round in the morning. When they came to pick me up, I walked to the exercise room at almost a normal walking pace, then I tried to outdo myself from the previous day on weights and speed of my reps. This caused me to tire out really quickly to the point where my vision started blurring, I was sweating a lot, and I had shortness of breath. They checked my blood pressure and saw that it had dropped quite a lot and decided to cut the session short and wheeled me back to my room in a wheelchair where I got back into bed.
I overexerted myself so much that I ended up falling asleep immediately for 45 min.
One of the doctors came in and had to remind me that I really need to take things slowly and not expect a day to day improvement when it should be a week to week improvement.
My mom put it in a different way that made me understand better. She said that if one of the places that they had an IV in feels sore is still healing from 3 days ago, imagine how slowly my bones and internal organs are healing
I have to tell you how appreciative I am of my dad for spending every single night and almost every waking hour during the day at the hospital with me, sacrificing his own sleep to make sure that I was as comfortable as possible. He helped me get in and out of bed, gave me sponge baths, rubbed lotion on my back when I was super itchy from the meds, and the list goes on and on. I am just in awe of how much he helped me with. It’s easy to think that you can handle stuff on your own prior to going into surgery but when it’s painful to even move your arm a little, every bit of help counts. The reason I’ve been doing so well with recovery now is because my whole family been there to support me this entire week.
After eating some lunch, we were all packed up and ready to go home. 6 days in the hospital is such a long time, I really wanted to sleep in my bed and not be poked by nurses all night long.
Getting home wasn’t a problem. Speedy was excited to see me and he did something very unusual after I got into bed. He stayed near me for a long time which he never does. I think he knows that I’m not being normal and wanted to give me some company.
I was instructed to alternate between Tylenol and Ibuprofen every 6 hours. If the pain is still high, use Tramadol. If the Tramadol doesn’t work, use Oxy. The doctors and nurses said to be liberal about my pain management because they don’t want me to be uncomfortable or wake up in a ton of pain. The medicine isn’t supposed to make it all go away but at least make it bearable.
I really don’t like the side effects I’m getting from the oxy: dry mouth, loss of appetite, weird dreams, constipation, and teeth chattering is the most annoying one.
With the weird dreams, I’d imagine that the nurses would come into my room to argue with me about the most random stuff. One time they came in to ask me how I budget my finances. Another time they came in and argued that I wasn’t drinking enough laxatives. These dreams would only last a second or two and I’d open my eyes and realize it was just a micronap and no one was in the room with me.
It’s been about 36 hours since I last had oxy and my teeth are still chattering but not as strongly anymore. I’m just going to endure the pain for now and hope that the other medicines will work for the next few weeks while I recover.
