Discharged

The anger woke me up: I was made so incredibly angry at an argument I was having with a firefighter who had gone off to tell stories about fighting fires while there was an active fire I was helping to fight. He had taken the light I was using so that he could go meet with his buddies to talk about fighting fires, leaving me in the dark, helping to load hoses onto a fire truck with one unsteady old man.

This is the way of the world, I think. 

I just did something stupid:

It's cold in our room (no heat, no reason for it in Miami hotel rooms usually), 64 degrees, so I put on my robe over my thin nighty and I made the mistake of tying the robe belt only to find that it hits just at the incision line. I realized this fact as soon as I sat and the robe belt tightened, pushing against the incision. That did not feel good at all.

The doctor prescribed an antibiotic this morning. Dave will go soon to Walgreens to pick it up. I maybe might possibly be developing an infection and she just wants to be proactive about things, which I appreciate, even if I hate antibiotics almost as much as I hate most all other medications, even ones that I know are helpful to me (because menopause has meant so many bad reactions and emergent allergies to drugs I took with wild abandon back in my youth, things like antibiotics and Pepto Bismol, wild and crazy things like that). 

Just to assure myself and everyone, this antibiotic  prescription is based on a very slight odor to some of the discharge on the bandages--not a foul odor, just a slightly "warm" odor, which I sometimes get in skin folds if I skip a shower for a day or two. The discharge doesn't smell every time I change the bandage, it comes and goes. My temp is normally 97.6, at the low end of normal, and the highest temp I've recorded in the last three days is 98.4--which is also a normal temp during my period or even during hot flashes when my temp sometimes rises by a degree or so. The incision site is not red or more painful than usual (though it's hard to say it's more or less painful when everything still hurts and I keep leaning on the incision site to get in and out of this maddeningly high hotel bed). I don't feel any more rundown or tired than you would expect from someone who had a fairly major surgery six days ago--and I feel considerably better and more energetic than I did day before yesterday.

I'm not overly worried. (But since I worry about everything, it's hard not to worry about this--and everything else, you know?) I'm trying to worry just enough, the correct amount of worry, but gauging that amount of worry is difficult, even though I've been practicing worrying for decades.

I'll tell about other things then:

In the "ask and you shall receive" category: Dave came back from Trader Joe's the other night with a roast beef in a box.  It's not bad tasting, is fairly low in sodium, and is ready to eat as soon as you open the package. It came at the perfect time, as I was getting sick of pre-cooked chicken and need to keep my protein intake up. It's a bit on the medium rare side, but I popped some in the microwave and had it for my snack (one of them) last night.

Here's an easily skipped paragraph that is meant more for my own bookkeeping than anything: Speaking of keeping my protein intake up--sigh--I'm supposed to be between 100g and 150g or so per day and that amount of protein is...difficult for me. One reason is that I don't eat eggs or have the ability any longer to tolerate much dairy (cheese is okay, milk no way). I have soymilk, chicken, protein bars and cheese as my main sources of protein. I have soymilk (16g for two cups) with oatmeal in the morning (and yesterday I started adding a scoop of collagen powder to it (5g) and sunflower butter (4g), so that's 25g for breakfast. I have a protein bar for a snack (20g), making it 45g. I have cheese for lunch (2 slices, 16g), that's 61g. Then some chicken or beef for dinner (roughly 20g for 3 ounces of either), so that's 81g...then I just kind of tap out. Another protein bar is another 20, so that gets me to 100 g for the day and I also try to drink another cup or two of soymilk during the day to get over 100.

These are the boring details of recovering from surgery, the minutes and concerns of my little life in this cold hotel room. 

More to come. 

 

 

The Shower

I feel like I got hit by a bus, and showering reveals all the bruising and open wounds still happening. I can't look. I stand with my back to the water while Dave does all the important work, washing my back and sides. I can do part of my lower half. We washed my hair in the sink night before last--or was it last night? Codeine has a say in my sense of time (and Dave is out grabbing dinner at Shake Shack). 

After my shower, I got into a clean nighty (I modified three nightgowns with snaps down the front since I can't lift my hands above my head). Then I got back into bed. Dave checked my grafts and put antibiotic ointment on them and replaced the bandages.  

The next morning:

I've been having insane dreams, part period hormones, part codeine. I dreamt of a cross between a horse and a rhinoceros, a creature kept in a small pen in someone's front yard. I dreamt I was in a city, a cross between the city I live in and New York City. I was at someone's party and she and I left the party looking for food maybe and she bought a joint from a stranger on the street and asked if I wanted some.  I did, but as I did, I woke thinking, this is not a good idea. Last night I dreamt about our cat- and housesitter, but the dream started outside our house that wasn't our house, at night, in the snow, her own two cats accompanying me, curious about my actions. The dream ended inside the house, the housesitter friendly but frantically washing dishes while I made toast. 

I'm up now at 6:30 (was up until almost one a.m., up again at 4:30). I woke up Dave to help me out of bed, tried to describe the last dream to him. Then I needed the toilet. Now I'm having a snack (a small slice from a round loaf of sourdough bread, a slice of Swiss cheese, some cucumber, lots of water.  

Then I'll take another pain pill. Everything still hurts. It's slowly feeling better, but it still hurts.  It's been six days since the surgery. If like to start relying less on the Tylenol with codeine and even on the Tylenol, period, but for now it's a necessary evil. 

We had a blue sky yardage yesterday but it was cold out.  It's cold in the room now, truly cold for me, like 64 degrees. But I wake up hot (hormones). 

More to come. 

The Hotel Room

I move from bed to chair to toilet. I take occasional walks from one end of the room to the other. I do foot pumps every hour or so in bed. Dave helps me change the abdominal bandages that collect the drainage under my arms (where the incisions are still the most open). I go from swollen to itchy and back. I take pain meds, alternating 325 mg acetaminophen without codeine and 300 mg acetaminophen with 30 mg codeine. I don't like the way the codeine makes me feel, but it is an effective pain reliever. 

When the swelling gets too bad, I use an ice pack, studiously avoiding the grafted areas. 

I take my vitamins in the morning with my high blood pressure medication. I take some kind of pain killer every four hours or so.

It's drizzling out. Yesterday it actually rained for awhile. 

We open the door to the balcony--Dave props it open with an empty water bottle--and listen to an unhoused man screaming at everything and nothing and we listen to the traffic, the loud, ugly, sustained honking at the worst of rush hour when people are doing the stupidest things around the construction in front of the hotel.

I took a shower last night, the first since surgery. Dave did most of the work. I mostly stood under the shower with my eyes closed and raised my arms very slightly (I'm not allowed to raise them above my head or to lift more than about 10 pounds)  and let the water run down. After, I changed into a clean nightgown and Dave changed the dressings on my skin grafts. I did not wash my hair yet, so it is a greasy mess.  

It's been cloudy the last couple of days and cold for Miami, 68 degrees, then 62, and tomorrow even lower. The natives don't know what to do when it's this cold. They wander by our window in long sleeves and hoodies and beanies, some in big coats.

I can get in bed on my own (though the hotel bed is about three inches too high to make this easy or comfortable) but I need Dave's help to get out of bed. I'm not supposed to use my arms very much and getting out of bed takes more arm use than getting into bed, surprisingly. 

There are two supermarkets within walking distance, the closest a Trader Joe's across the street from the hotel.  Dave brings relatively healthy things to eat from the grocery store and he makes simple meals in our little kitchen. I've eaten a lot of pre-cooked chicken and baby carrots, sourdough bread and Swiss cheese made into half-sandwiches, half baked potatoes with nothing on them, oatmeal mixed with soymilk and sunflower butter, crackers with avocado mash spread on them. I drink a lot of water.

I take Colace to combat the codeine's effects on my guts. It works.

I use my incentive spirometer a couple of times a day and marvel at how easy it is to breathe at sea level and without the encumbrance of the majority of my breasts. 

Of course the day after surgery, I started my period. It's very light--a perimenopause/menopause period--so I don't have to do too much, but it's just the way of the world, isn't it? Murphy's Menstrual Cycle. 

I'm trying to sleep or rest a lot. But laying in bed gets old. I watch and re-watch Pitch Perfect. I watch and re-watch youtube videos. I tried to turn on the TV in our old room the night before surgery and the commercials were too much for me. I turned it off again and haven't gone back to television. 

The abdominal bandages under my arms still collect drainage, the left side more than the right, a lot more. This afternoon I noticed a slight warm smell to the drainage, so I sent an email to the surgeon's office and we'll see when we get a reply. If it gets worse, I'll text or call her number, but for now we're just monitoring the situation.

Gray Kitty's new best friend sends photos and reports almost every day. He curls up next to her for pets, grouses at her to stir up his food when he pushes it to the side of the bowl. I'm glad he is being well taken care of.

Recovery

Surlgery went fine.  I spent the night in the hospital and am now back in our hotel room in recovery mode. I'm a bruised and swollen mess of course, but I'm keeping up with the pain meds and trying to stay hydrated and get lots of rest.  The next hurdle is avoiding infection.

My throat is kind of sore from the ventilator but the anesthesia didn't knock me back so much, thankfully.  Mentally I feel fine except for a few low moments where I've wondered if it was really worth it. 

Miami, Right?

Yesterday we arrived in Miami--Miami Beach, to be exact--and I'm scared. 

It's very hot and humid here-- it's supposed to get "cold" tomorrow (68°F).  But yesterday it was snowing when we left home at 4:45 in the morning to drive to the airport on ice-coated roads. We were bundled up against the cold in clothes that we had to shed when we reached this land of palm trees, shirtless young muscle men, and Cuban everything. 

Before yesterday, I hadn't been on a plane since before the pandemic--a trip to NYC in 2019--and if not for this, I would not have been on a plane yesterday either. 

This is one reason why:

Gray Kitty is an old boy and needs lots of TLC (and meds and daily subcutaneous fluids) so leaving him isn't an easy thing for us to do. 

Luckily our friend Grace found the perfect house and cat sitter for us. Gray Kitty has already made friends with her and she has no problems giving him his meds and with help from my mother--who generously offered to come out every day--giving him his daily subQ fluids. 

She sent these pics and also texted that she's taken to calling him "Lord Gray," which I hope doesn't go to his head (although he already knows he runs the house). 

I'm joking, but honestly, it is such an incredible relief to have someone so competent to take care of our little problem child. 

So today we're here in a hotel room in Miami. Dave has stepped out to bring back some lunch and I'm slamming water and watching YouTube videos about life on Svaldbard, the remote city on a remote island near the North Pole.  

I'm scared and excited, waiting for surgery tomorrow.

It's going to be fine, right?