400CCs a trip, in case you wanted to know So I woke up in the recovery room, still on that blasted uncomfortable bed, with an alarm beeping behind me. I felt very heavy, like I was at the bottom of a pool, and all I wanted to do was sleep. But a nurse, Doris, kept saying to me, "Deep breaths! Deep breaths!" Why deep breaths? Apparently anaesthesia paralyzes the lungs a bit. While in sleep mode, you breathe very shallowly and it doesn't oygenate your blood as well. Deep breathing stimulates the lungs, drives out the anaesthesia and reoxygenates the blood. Every time my blood o2 went below 90%, that blasted beeper would go off. Then the chorus would start: "Take deep breaths, Bonnie. Breathe deep." So I did that for a few hours. I developed a backache and a headache from the damned uncomfortable bed, and my ribs ached from all the deep breaths I was trying to take. I had a huge gauze pad on my throat the size and thickness of a Kotex Ultra Super Thick Stuck Pig Strength Maxi Pad. It was taped to my neck in such a way that it pulled my chin down toward my chest. I was too scared to loosen the tape. My right wrist stung as the cathether was removed from the artery and my wrist and hand were covered in dry blood. Ewww. I wasn't a good patient at this time. Desiree' did her best to make me more comfortable, and she spoon fed me chipped ice, which felt glorious. Doris brought me magazines, but I couldn't concentrate on reading. I just kept watching the clock and wondering when I could get out of there. I had woken up at about 9:15, and I thought that I should be getting into a room by about 11:30. I guess because the beeper kept going off, I wasn't stable enough to move. Also, because I was going to be put in the telemetry ward (cardiac) they had to wait for a room to open up. Why the cardiac ward? I think with my hypertension, doubled with where the surgeon was digging around, they wanted to keep me under closer observation. I kept grousing that Gary needed to just leave and get his lunch; I wasn't going anywhere for a while. Doris gave him a call in the waiting room. He said he'd let them know when he got back. So I waited. And ate ice chips. And breathed as deeply as I could. And watched as the other patients got wheeled in and out of recovery. Finally, 2:30 rolled around and the call came in that my room was ready, room 320D. Doris and Desiree untethered me from my machines and rolled my most uncomfortable bed out of there. On the way, we picked up Gary in the hallway. He looked relieved to see me, but also a bit dismayed at my appearance, I think. Or maybe the maxi pad on my throat spooked him. Men are funny about things like that. I was still a little wigged out so I had a nice conversation with nearly everyone else in the elevator. Then we rolled to 320D and Doris said, "Wait. That room isn't cleaned up yet. There's a urinal and a can of soda -- lemme find out what's going on." So we hung out in the hallway for a while and Gary peeked in the room. It was a nice single room with a recliner and a bathroom and it was very spacious. But I couldn't have that room. Doris came back and said that my room actually 307D. So I expected that that room would be semi-private, and be like every other hospital room I've seen. When we got there, it was identical to 320D, it was nice and dim and had pretty wallpaper, a bright bathroom, and a shared patio with the room next door. I was very surprised to have such a nice room. I was told that all the room in the ward were like this one. The head nurse, Laura, and her technician, Elaine, came in and everyone helped me off the most uncomfortable bed to the most fantastic bed I had ever been on, at least in comparison to the cement block that put my backside to sleep that I had been on for nearly 10 hours. Doris and Desiree whisked themselves away and Laura and Elaine proceeded to loosen my gown and stick little electrode patches everywhere and hooked them up to a monitor that they placed in the front pocket of my gown. Then they took my vitals, let me know that I needed to keep breathing deep and try to walk around a bit, and meanwhile, was I hungry? They could get me a turkey sandwich. I said yes to that, and Elaine returned with a turkey sandwich, mayo, a little tub of vanilla ice cream, and a tiny can of Coke. And a fresh pitcher of ice water. The vanilla ice cream was the best thing I had ever tasted. I marvelled over the little can of coke (I was allowed full sugar coke?? I was later informed I could eat anything I wanted). The only drawback was that I had to pee in a hat. Yes, there was a plastic tub in the toilet that I had to pee into and the amount that I peed was tracked. Later, because I was drinking so damn much water, I just started writing it down myself. Gary and I then settled down to watch some cable. We don't have cable at home, so we got to marvel at Cartoon Network!
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