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.