Post-Op

The earliest thing I can remember after I gained consciousness coming out of surgery on Wednesday was that I saw a lot pagan deities involved in some sort of struggle with the hospital staff in the crowded, bustling post-op ward. The deities looked just like regular modern men and women. After a while I realized that I had just been hallucinating, and that all of the men and women bustling about were hospital staff.

When you have a kidney removed, you're going to have to deal with some pain. My pain didn't become really severe until around midnight, on a second, less-crowded post-op ward. My surgery had begun at 11:30 AM, and before surgery they had given me a nerve blocker in my abdomen. They said the nerve blocker would last about 12 hours. I assume that my severe pain was a result of the nerve blocker wearing off.

On Thursday they said I was going to stand up, go to the chair beside my bed and sit down in it. I couldn't believe they were asking me to do that, and when I did it the pain was truly horrendous. But they said that it would get easier every time I walked, and that I should try to walk farther each time. And it is getting easy. For a while it felt like the pain would never decrease, but it has.

Standing up and sitting down are very difficult. Going from sitting down to lying down is worse. Even harder is picking something up off of the floor. The books I'll be browsing will probably be at chest level or higher for a while. Before I was discharged, an occupational therapist at the hospital gave me a device with which I can pick up articles of clothing, making dressing and un-dressing much easier.

I have 4 surgery incisions, 1 huge one, 4 inches long or more, going between the halves of my main ab muscles. 3 smaller ones where there used instruments to come at my kidney from different angles. The one just to the right of my main ab muscles hurts often and severely. The huge one hurts less often and less severely.