Groundhogs Day

Today was a loooong day. Usually after two or three days post surgery the combination of heavy medications and prisoner like regulation the mind starts to play tricks. And rolling the clocks back one hour can really mess with you. Today was one of those days.

Al struggled today. She did not sleep well Saturday night and was basically awake starting in the insanely early hours of the morning. Just when Al is trying to fall asleep her IV alarm goes off, or someone knocks on her door to check her blood pressure, or its time to change the bedding so she has to get out of bed, or they ask her “How is your pain and where?” and all she wants to say is “How about my butt. That’s what hurts. Please let me sleep”.

So now you can see when the nurses changed the clock right in front of her the day just never seemed to end. As each hour passed the clock seemed to be lying and the day just got more confusing.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it is fun to decipher what is going through Al’s head and today was especially confusing. A Cowboy made a visit to Al’s room today. And she said “Back of Bi-otch” to someone that wasn’t in the room! She struggled all day with the time and date. And really wanted to call her dad. In the morning she wanted to send some text messages but it was so hard to concentrate she wasn’t able to complete the text the way she wanted. This only added to the frustration she was going through.

With all the dizzying confusion she is still the best patient. Her true nature comes out and she is so thankful for all the nurses do for her, she doesn’t want to cause any inconveniences and apologizes each time she asks for something. Every one of her nurses loves to take care of her because she is just so sweet and wonderful. Even though she is going through so much.

She did get actual meals today including turkey and mashed potatoes. But she wasn’t hungry and substituted it for soup, bread and some rainbow sherbet later. By all indications her K-pouch is working perfectly and she is learning how to care for it with the nurses’ instruction. It will still take some time to get used to the new plumbing and we hope she will be able to drain her pouch on her own by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Al has had a cough over the past month that just wasn’t going away. Well this cough is causing a lot of pain now as her 8-10 inch abdominal incision heals. She has somewhere around 18 staples down her belly and a tube coming out on her left and right side. Any cough is extremely painful. She had a chest X-ray today to be sure there weren’t any issues with her lungs and she passed. She also had an ultrasound of her legs to check for any blood clots and she passed that as well.

Tonight, she asked for something to help her sleep and we hope that she is able to rest peacefully. Tomorrow will be another battle both physically and emotional for all of us. Thank you for all your prayers and love.