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| View out of the hospital window at 12:30 am after another shot f heparin. |
Being in the hospital really simplifies your priorities for you. Aside from wanting food and pain relief, I wanted to go to the bathroom. I was still strapped into the compression cuffs for my legs and wearing my bright yellow "Fall Risk" arm band so I had to push the call button and wait for someone to get me out of bed. That time of day everyone else wants the same thing and they're switching over staff so I waited about 15 minutes for someone to come get me up, which was not a bad amount of time,all things considered.
They helped me out of bed and to the bathroom, then said they would let me loose to wander around in the room (very carefully) for awhile. I shuffled to the window and sat down in the recliner while I contemplated that which is hospital breakfast. I felt so nauseated that nothing sounded good but I had not eaten in over ten hours. I knew that regular consumption of food is on the requisite list of behaviors that get you out of a hospital so I settled on peppermint tea, cream of wheat with some brown sugar, and ambitiously ordered the biscuits and gravy because that seemed most likely to fortify my stomach against future doses of percocet.
After that I sat in the recliner for a little while longer reading the issue of the Seattle Times they had brought in the day before and doing my best to enjoy the view. A little while later one of the surgeons came in for my follow up. I immediately got a lecture about not taking enough pain medication (he could tell by how stiffly I was holding my neck) but he let me off easy since it was taking the kitchen awhile to bring up my food. He said that the determining factors of whether I got to go home were if they could remove the drain, if I could keep down the food they were bringing, and if I could take enough pain pills to get the pain under control. Challenge accepted! I was so ready to go home.
I had paid attention to when they were emptying the drain during the night as to how much was collecting in the bulb and already felt confident that it would come out. He agreed and got to work removing the small tube. I felt a little bit of tugging as he pulled it out but that was it. He taped on a piece of gauze just in case it continue to leak for a little bit, gave me another lecture about taking the pain medication, and left.
A short while later my breakfast showed up. The smell made my stomach churn but I was a woman on a mission. I ate the biscuits and gravy and made it through about half of the cream of wheat before the nurse, Summer, came in to see me. She was a very pretty blonde, in a girl-next-door sort of way. If I had to guess I'd say she was in here late twenties and about five months pregnant. She gave me a dose of percocet and helped me get settled. A few minutes later the tech and her student trainee came in to see if they could convince me to take a walk but after all the "activity" of the morning all I wanted was a nap so I begged off.
About an hour later I woke up and the pain was still not under control so I called for some more medicine. Summer took away the rest of the food and we talked a little about what the doctor had said about me being released and she seemed perfectly happy to help me make it happen. She thought I might feel less queasy if I got up and walked around. Normally the nurse doesn't have much time to spend with patients, but she said she wasn't busy and would walk me up and down the hall. We went down to the glassed in sitting area at the end of the hall. We talked a little about pregnancy and how she hated sleeping on her side. I being an inveterate side-sleeper gave her some tips on how to make it more comfortable (pillows, lots of them). The view was even better in the daylight but I didn't have the energy to stick around for it so we went back up the hall to the nurse's station then back to my room.
When we got back to the room she said she would get started on having me released as soon as Sean made it to the hospital to pick me up. Unfortunately, between me and him was all of Seattle's morning rush hour traffic. Even though I felt like I'd been up for a long time, it was still only 9 a.m. I crawled back in to bed to sleep and get up the strength to leave.
About an hour later, Sean finally arrived. Traffic had been bad but parking in the hospital was even worse. I felt a little bad for rushing him right back out the door but I was eager to go so I handed him some prescriptions to get filled and he went off to find the pharmacy so they could be filled and picked up on our way out of the hospital. The two techs came in to get me out of the compression cuffs and remove the IV from my arm.
Sean returned just as they were finishing up so I shooed them out of the room so I could change into clothes to go home in. I didn't use half of the stuff I packed, but after a whole day spent in a hospital gown I was happy to have clean clothes to put on to go home in, if you can call yoga pants and a nightshirt "clothes". As soon as I was dressed the nurse came with my discharge papers. It was lucky that Sean was there because I hardly remember the conversation. Between the drugs and the work of getting ready I wasn't really with it anymore. I'd used up all of my energy fulfilling all the requirements to get to go home and now it was up to Sean to get me there.
Whenever you're in a hospital they don't like you to leave under your own steam so a transporter was called to take us to the pharmacy to pick up the prescriptions. I'll be on medication for the rest of my life but for the next few weeks I'll be only a short-acting form so when they want to start the radiation treatment I won't have to wait for the thyroid medication to leave my system before starting. It was at this point that I made the mildly distrubing discovery that I was in a completely different building from where I'd had my surgery. I thought they'd just moved me up a few floors, but apparently I'd missed a bit of the journey.
Sean didn't want to leave me sitting outside waiting for him to bring the car around so after the transporter droped us at the pharmacy and Sean got my prescriptions he wheeled me to the car. After checking in the day before, I hadn't been anywhere in the hospital without someone else walking me there or pushing me in a bed or a chair, but Sean had been up and down between floors in three different buildings and got us back to the parked car easily. We went up in the elevator, across a sky bridge, down a hall, down another elevator and finally to the car. Even though I'm sure I didn't look it I was ecstatic to be so close to being out of the hospital.
Sean had driven back and forth to the hospital so many times in the last month that he knew the way already which was good because I was in no condition to play navigator. I spent the whole ride home focusing on keeping my eyes open so I could look out the window so I wouldn't get car sick. A little more than twenty minutes later I was finally home! Sean helped me up the steps and into the house and then we both slept for a few hours.
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I feel like today I may have turned a corner, though. The pain seems to be subsiding and I'm taking the pain pills less frequently, but I'm still taking the pills when I notice the stiffness is getting worse or I'm clenching my teeth. When I'm awake I try to keep stretching my neck and moving around a little to keep the muscles limber.
The thing that feels the worst is eating so I feel constantly hungry but it is so tiring to eat more than a little food that I run out of energy before I get full. Several friends brought me lots of tasty food, though, so when I am able to eat at least it's good food. Other than a box of organic mac n' cheese last night we have not done any cooking since I got home from the hospital which has been a blessing. It won't be surprising to me if I've lost some weight through all of this.
I've got a follow-up appointment with the surgical team this coming Friday. By then they should have completed the full biopsy of my thyroid and decided what the next step is in terms of treatments. There is still a chance they will decide against the radiation treatment but it is probably a very small chance. For now my job is to rest and take care of myself.
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