Just add Demerol

My brain has left the building; I feel dumber than a bag of hammers. It must be the Demerol. I try not to take it all the time, but when my ankle starts hurting or hurts too much to sleep and enough time has elapsed, I take another one. People call me and I can barely carry on a conversation. I feel like reading a book is too much of a commitment; a magazine or a catalog is plenty. I have watched more bad TV in the last week than I care to even document. Usually, I have the laptop on at the same time as the bad TV and either go on Facebook or look at stuff I'd like to have but can't afford. I've spent many hours surfing Ebay. Yesterday I searched things that had "ugly" in the item description--ugly shoes, ugly lamp; it's a fairly entertaining time-killer. Give it a try sometime.

My cast itches worse by the day and it feels kind of loose now. My ankle just feels generally weird. I know there are screws in it, but they are the kind that absorb into the tissue and don't have to be removed. I swear I can feel them in there; I think the doctor cautioned me this would happen. It's hard to remember everything, but my week-after-surgery appointment is tomorrow. It will be my first time attempting to leave the house with the scooter. I believe this infernal cast will be removed on this momentous occasion, replaced by a Velcro-trimmed boot of some kind, which I will have the option of removing from time to time.

Wow. When the sum total of my dreams is equals washing my leg--lotion being the shining cherry on the cake of said dreams--I have no choice but to conclude: Yes. It is the Demerol.

Quiet day

So here I am in a cast. The cats have been more affectionate than usual, as they tend to do when their people get sick. Mr. Salted has been doing everything, the poor guy. The most I've managed to do is help him fold laundry and get coupons together for grocery shopping.

I'm getting more adept at hopping, finding places to brace myself for support, and maneuvering the scooter. The scooter is great--the hardest part is having control while getting up or down from a seated position. My legs are getting all bruised and banged up from hitting them on the scooter--I still don't know quite where it ends and I begin. All three cats are afraid of the scooter. I have, however, caught one or another of them catloafing on the shower chair at random times.

My leg hurts quite a bit, more than I thought it would--I ran out of the liquid Demerol quickly and requested (and got) Demerol capsules. My bariatric surgery center said capsules should be okay since I am two months out--and it seems to be working fine. It just makes me sleepy and, above all else, stupid. (For the record, I'm not a fan of being stupid, but sleeping? Always welcome.)

I also forgot about the classic cast problem--yearning to itch. This thing comes off on the 8th and I get a boot.

I keep thinking, "I'm home! I have time and a laptop! I should be writing!!!" Then I think, mindless TV with random nap attacks sounds so much better. Sigh.

Demerol

I am *so* glad to be home. I had sat in my hospital bed for hours with my laptop calling every pharmacy in the known universe, trying to get that !@#$% liquid Demerol, or if you prefer, Demerol elixir. One pharmacy I talked to in a snooty nearby town was a complete joke. I asked if their pharmacy stocked liquid Demerol, and got this guy who spoke barely passable English--I couldn't pin down the accent. He got alllll excited. "That is illegal! I cannot tell you that," he said. "It's a controlled substance and you could be planning to rob us." (Kudos for your customer service, there. I always try to give stores my business when they call me a thief, are you kidding?)You could not even measure how annoyed I was by this whole exchange. I had already called 12 pharmacies at least, I was sitting uncomfortably in a hospital bed, and I just wanted to find where I could fill this prescription so I could go home.

I took a deep breath and tried reasoning with him. "Sir, I am well aware of the HIPAA laws. I am not having Mr.Salted drive all the way to Snootytown to try to fill this prescription on the outside chance you are just playing coy with me and don't really have it." Finally, he spit it out that they did have it. However, the other place who stocked it was closer and their employees didn't sound like they had been huffing spray paint, so I went to the second place. Mr. Paranoia is probably still wigging out from my phone call and wondering why I never showed up. Oddly enough, I don't feel too bad about that.

2nd night in hospital

After rhapsodizing about the loveliness of the surgery experience in my last blog entry, the proverbial doo-doo hit the fan. As in, within half an hour of hitting "publish post" yesterday, I got up, looked down, and there was blood on the floor. Needless to say, I freaked out and basically had a mild panic attack. The culprit turned out to be one of my surgical incisions. The left side of my stomach around one of them is very badly bruised to about the circumference of a healthy grapefruit, though the incision itself is quite tiny, less than 1/2 inch. When the surgeon's assistant came in this morning to touch base with me, he informed me that my particular anatomy consisted of a much thicker abdominal wall than most and therefore they had had a difficult time passing the instruments through during the laproscopic bypass, which explains the bruising. I have been up and walking--I did four circuits around this hospital floor today--and I can do that without unbearable pain, just an occasional deep breath like a stitch in my side or ribs.

I am also one of those people who is allergic to almost every pain med on the planet. No Vicodin, Percocet, Oxycodone, Darvocet, etc. I can now add Dilaudid to the "no" list. The itching was so bad I was not going to get any rest, and for some reason, they just plain didn't want to give me the Demerol I suggested--they don't like the way it metabolizes in the body or something like that. However, it's the only pain med that's ever worked for me, and I told them this. This afternoon, they finally consented to give it to me in a shot. I took the first shot, but balked at having to have a shot every four hours, so they removed the anchor from their asses and got me some liquid Demerol that can go in my IV. I am a LOT more comfortable now. (Now I have to find a pharmacy that stocks liquid Demerol for when I go home. Apparently it's an unusual item.)

So between the incision woes and the drug allergies, they decided to keep me another night. Mr. Salted and I are both more than ready to be out of here, but they gave him a cot, and we have our iPods, our books, the laptop, and each other. So we will make it. They did tell me I might have to stay two nights when we scheduled this operation. He's been great. I'm reading one of Lewis Black's books, which is the perfect thing to be reading in the hospital.

I got more flowers today from the people I work with, and was very touched. People have really been much kinder than I expected, which is always a most pleasant surprise.