Tedious Tedium

Another long day in the hotel room.  They tested the hotel fire alarms this morning. It seemed to go on and on but was probably just over 10 minutes. Strangely, they also tested the fire alarms in the hospital the night I was there.  Maybe it's fire alarm testing season.

Speaking of seasons, it was fall out early winter here yesterday and today it's spring.  The sky is blue and it's still chilly but nice enough for us to have the balcony door propped open. 

We texted the surgeon a photo of the current state of the infected part of the incision and she said it's looking really good and on the right path.  Well see her on Monday to have her look at things since we'll be traveling home and back to our pitiful little state's archaic medical system next week. 

Please, do not get me started on trying to arrange follow up care once we return home. 

I napped in the afternoon, had a snack with Dave and took the last dose of azithromycin, then we changed the dressing over the incision. 

Just after surgery, when I was the most smashed up and needed all the help for all the things, I didn't care about dignity and it didn't matter who saw my smashed up self. Now I'm feeling naked when I have to strip down to the waist to change the dressings on the incisions and that feeling of nakedness and embarrassment is made worse when we forget to close the curtains. Our balcony looks out over a busy intersection, because of course it does.  I'm sure no one or nearly no one looks up into our room, but they could, and if they did, they would see everything. 

And I misjudged the timing of the Tylenol I've been taking for pain so the dressing change felt extra painful. The surgeon has a very mild manner and she had said something about pain increasing with wound care and as the affected area healed and it was so under the radar that the pain of it initially took me by surprise. I leaned a bit on the Tylenol with codeine and now I'm down to my last few of those. (The initial prescription was for forty of them--FORTY--and I had laughed because there was no way I was going to get through forty pain pills. Now I'm looking with dismay at the last five of them in the bottom of the pill bottle and wondering how to deal with this situation. Should I just double up on the Tylenol 325s we got over the counter or cut the last five in half and take a half with a Tylenol 325...because there's no way I'm up to facing the pain of this situation sans medication. 

And everything hurt more than it should have. 

And the wound wash spray felt incredibly cold when it hit my side and ran down underneath the towel that I had wrapped around my waist. 

And I just cried. 

When we were done with the dressing change, I put my thin nighty back on. Dave pulled the curtains all the way closed.