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.