Hooosssppiitaalll

Been fairly rough few days. Opioids really mess with me. I can take a lot, so long as I can maintain a sort of internal equilibrium, but drugs make it very difficult to do that. Just having the mental capacity to organise my thoughts into a decent sense-making blog post is taking so much concentration and energy.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to get moved to a bigger room of my own, which helps everything a lot. More room, less noise, more privacy and my own bathroom! Quite a few frustrating things have been going on, so its been really wonderful having a space to discuss things with mum and even have visiters. Its great not to have to spend another night sharing the room with that rude lady. From what mum and I could pt together she's had a pretty terrible time, I think she'd had a tube down her throat before I got there as there were heaps of comments about her being able to speak again, how long she'd been there- plus apparently she'd been in ICU before me. So I have forgiven her. But yeah, as it turns out the nurses aren't really allowed to tell people when to put on their tv. However, the second and final night we shared the room she waited until 6am before turning it on, which I was ok with.

The day that followed this was pretty up and down. I had a decent sleep (despite 6am tv) and so was feeling ok in the morning. This was ruined by a very disappointing nurse, who seemed vaguely irritated by my pushing the help button, lacked enthusiasm and confidence and left me standing in the bathroom pulling the assistance needed string thing repeatedly for 5 minutes. Standing up was a big enough task, standing still and then trying to push a tower thing with multiple pain killer-ee things hanging off it through a heavy door and over a slight hill (very slight really, but enormous to people in my situation) was beyond exhausting. I was not in a good way anyhow and found myself very upset. Which isn't so good when heavy breathing is painful, you need to be able to breathe properly through your nose to get 100% oxygen saturation from the nasal prongs, and you dont have eyelashes to help get the tears out of your eyes (a use I never realised they had until they were gone). This all sounds very pathetic and a bit unnecessary to share in such detail, but it was actually one of the most upsetting events of the last few days. The feelings of powerlessness and wrongness, the reminder that I have very limited control over my situation, the experience of being weak as an anaemic kitten... things I'd rather not have had to experience during the "prime of my physical life".


....OK so I wrote the above yesterday. I'm getting increasingly confused about days. At some point in the last few days though, a nurse did two silly things. The first one was she brought me a pill and I asked her: "what is this called? Is it the anti inflammatory I had this morning? Do I need to eat with this?"
Her responses were (from what I could make out between the umms and ahhhs) "Vniailsunlianv", "no" and "noommmmmmmhmmm??"
So she was wrong or just unclear about all these things. I saw the actual name on the page, and googled it, providing me with all the answers I needed in moheticments. Later on, she hooked me up tot he wrong localanaesthetic. I barely got through any though before another nurse came in and it was the right one and changed it. The two drugs were fairly similar and no harm was done - but it was very disturbing to think that I can just be given the wrong thing, anything, and there is only is much that can be done to prevent it.


....OK now since writing all THAT, I had the second of my tubes taken out! Wooo! The first was taken out yesterday after an xray and a lot of draining. It was very uncomfortable and made me particularly nervous as on of the people removing it was the incompetent nurse for the day before. Today it went somewhat quicker, was not very painful, and the nurses communicated more clearly. I feel much better having them out. I now only have one attachment, the local anaesthetic pain buster tube thing. I dont expect this to hurt too much as the tube apparently is even thinner than the tube in cannulars.

We've come to the conclusion I'm allergic to the oxycontin- which is the longer acting slow release pain drug I've been on. It makes me pretty sick. This puts more pressure on me to have regular endone, which I loathe. It just knocks me out. I just want to sleep all da right now!

I haven't read through this whole post so i dont know how much sense it mkes. However I'm going to try some walking now and then maybe a shower, as looking at screens make me tired and headachy.

Thank you all for the love and kind words