It's been one week since surgery and today for the first time I feel somewhat better then I have been...so that's a start! The good news is that my doctor only needed to take out about 1% of my lung - meaning that I still have the entire thing pretty much. Whoop! I couldn't have asked for a better outcome. I'm still waiting on the pathology reports (hopefully I'll get them tomorrow) to see if the nodule in my pelvis was anything and of course, to see if the margins taken out around the tumor in my lung are cancer free. Fingers crossed.
Two days ago I had my first shower in 5 days. It's funny what a little hot water and soap can do for one's demeanor. That's not to say that water and soap can make your physical aches any better because that, my friends, it cannot. When breathing is a struggle, it's not likely that you will be able to do much of anything. Let me go back 7 days...
My surgery wasn't scheduled until 2:15pm on the 28th. In pure Erin fashion, when they told me they could not wait until I was knocked out to give me the epidural and wanted to give it to me around 12ish to speed up the process, the sobbing and I hate you!'s ran rapid. I will admit, however, once they gave me the epidural everything that followed is completely cut out of my memory. I legit remember nothing following having a team of doctors surrounding my waiting area hospital bed, hysterically crying and having the needle placed in my back. Perhaps I'm suppressing the bad memories. It's funny because I told my mother to bring her camera to take a few pictures but when I looked at them the other day I realized I had no recollection of her taking any of them. This is me before going into surgery (which was over 2 hours LATE - thank goodness I was doped up because I would've been going nuts...), of course crying and unhappy right after getting the damn epidural in my back:
Fun times. Apparently after I started feeling a little loopy with sedatives I became much more smiley and started snapping pictures of myself and my parents. Here is one with the parents:
Do you enjoy the photo in the back of me that when lifted contained devices of torture? They have to hide that shit otherwise you would probably be throwing things out of your room. Of course the smiles came to an end when I was finally going in for surgery. I asked my mom who let me go in with my iPod (which I have no memory of listening to but have pictures to prove it) to which she replied that I allegedly refused to go into surgery unless I was able to listen to some music. Therefore, the nurse let me listen to my iPod as I was being wheeled into surgery. I asked her what I was listening to and she said she had no idea. I find this funny for a few reasons - 1.) both of my parents are technologically impaired so unless I was able to turn on and find a good song on my iPod in my la-la-land state of mind, I was probably just sitting there with the ear buds in and no actual music playing and 2.) leave it to me to want every moment of my life set to music including something as shitty as surgery. I really wonder what song (if any) was playing. I can't tell from this picture because of the glare but if you look closely, it really does look like the iPod is shut off - HA! I kill myself.
Needless to say I don't remember surgery (ugh - thank GOD) but I do remember my first vision coming out of it. I can't recall who it was but someone came over me with a big smile on their face and I asked if they took out my whole lung. They said no, that they only had to remove 1% of it. I was SO happy. I don't remember getting wheeled into the recovery room or much else but I do remember seeing my parents and just smiling from ear to ear saying that I still had my lung.
Since the bed they put you in before you wake up from surgery is the one they wheel you up to recovery in, I didn't get out of bed that night and of course, sleeping was next to impossible. They gave me my own epidural pump but as I said probably 100+ times while I was in the hospital, the epidural did absolutely NOTHING for the pain in my lung and upper body. I'm not even sure why I had it in to be honest. Just another means of torture, I guess. I don't remember the first night but after speaking with my mother (who stayed with me overnight that first night) apparently I was complaining about the pain all night long. The next morning before I could even get something in my stomach, they were moving me out of bed to get an X Ray of my chest. Mind you, I hadn't eaten anything since about 10pm on June 27th - it was now the morning of the 29th, I had received major surgery the evening before and was now doped up on so many meds I could open my own pharmacy. Needless to say when they got me into the wheelchair the blood completely drained from my face and I pretty much passed out.
I'll never understand this about hospitals. They don't let you eat before the day which I get - but after, it's basically like they want to see you sick for as long as possible. I wasn't allowed to eat anything until later that afternoon for lunch. After my X Ray all I was able to "eat" were liquids - an Italian ice, some gross gelatin sludge, a cup of juice, etc. Yum...
The entire time I was in the hospital sucked. There was nothing they could give me to get rid of the pain in my upper body. How a hospital such as Sloan couldn't provide me with ANY kind of medicine to relieve SOME of the pressure/pain still baffles me. The only thing that seemed to work whatsoever was this non-narcotic, anti-inflammatory med that they put through my IV once every 6 hours. I cannot recall the name of it for the life of me and I know I must have asked about 60 times what it was called. What I couldn't comprehend was that if this was the ONLY thing giving me any sort of relief - why was I only able to have it once every 6 hours? Let me tell you, it was not enough. After about 3 hours the medicine would stop working and I was basically just left there to be in pain. They kept telling me to click my little epidural button - I can't express how many fucking times I told them that the epidural was doing absolutely nothing for me. Can you tell I'm still bitter? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
Overall though, the nurses were nice and were there when I needed them except for Thursday and Friday. When I say this, it is not an exaggeration. If there was a Hell on Earth, Thursday would've been hell for me. It probably would've been hell for anyone. It was legitimately a day of pure torture. I woke up for the 10th time Wednesday night and realized that it was actually Thursday morning. It was probably 8am. I buzzed for a nurse to come help me with my pain medicine as I knew I would be due in a few minutes to receive the only thing that was helping me. When I still hadn't seen anyone 20 minutes later, I buzzed again. They said the night nurse had left and a new nurse was coming. Um, ok...so where the fuck were they? I waited over 45 minutes before my new MALE nurse came strolling in the room. I felt as though an elephant was sitting on my chest - I couldn't breathe. I explained to him that the only thing helping me was this certain medicine to which he disappeared for another 10 minutes to go get it while I sat suffering. I already hated him.
The entire day was like this. I knew I would be due for something and he would be nowhere to be found. Call me crazy but I feel like being that it's your JOB to know what the fuck is going on, you should already be in my room when certain things are due. I must have buzzed this guy four times explaining to him that the med that was originally helping me was now not. Nothing was working. I couldn't breathe and the pressure on my upper left side and shoulder was so extremely bad that I kept crying all day. Earlier in the morning my doctor had come in and I explained that something needed to be done that wasn't being done because this was already a nightmare (and it was only 7am). He stated that perhaps it was the chest tube that I had in - maybe it was pushing my lung into an awkward position and if it was adjusted a little it would relieve some of the pressure. I stated this over and over to my idiot male nurse and he told me he would check to see if something could be done. I also requested that my catheter be removed since it was 1 of 4 tubes that I knew I didn't need sticking out of me anymore. He said he would check on that too.
As some of my friends that visited me on Thursday can attest, I was absolutely miserable and I HATED this moron that was in charge of me that day. He didn't listen to me at all. His only answer for me was to push my damn epidural button. It was after 5pm when he came into the room for maybe the third time all day to say that he was going to take out my catheter. I looked at him like he had 30 heads. So basically you had me suffer the entire day and now you tell me YOU'RE the one that's going to be poking around in my vagina? No thanks. I told him I preferred a female nurse to do that to which he got an attitude and asked me why. Why? WHY? I wanted to tell him to fuck himself if he really needed to ask me why I wanted a female nurse to take out my catheter but I refrained and explained that I felt more comfortable having a woman do it. He said with an attitude, "Well there are no female nurses that are free to do it now so you'll probably have to wait until around 7pm then." Go to hell you piece of shit.
I should have said with an attitude back, I've been waiting all damn day anyway; what's another few hours? At this point I didn't care how long I had to wait - there was no way I was letting him near me if I didn't have to. He was a total douche-bag and you can bet your ass I'm going to get this asshole in trouble if it kills me.
Long story short, a female nurse came in around 7pm to take out my catheter (YAY!) and adjust the chest tube an inch or so (THANK GOD). Let me tell you - as soon as she pulled out the tube in my back just a tiny bit I immediately felt relief from the horrible pressure I had to endure the entire day. I don't understand why something wasn't done sooner. It was seriously an entire day of torture that I had to tolerate when it could have been alleviated hours prior. I was so upset but relieved that I could finally breathe.
I had different nurses each day and night except for lucky me when I was blessed with having the same idiot male nurse on Friday. All I kept telling myself was that I was getting out of that damn hospital the following morning so I only had to endure 1 more day of this. The best part about this is when I was doing my nightly laps around the hospital floor Thursday night (to strengthen my lungs) a nurse I never saw came up to me to ask me if the asshole was my nurse that day. When I said yes she told me that he asked her to cheer me up since he was being kind of a "bitch" the whole day. Uhhh, are you serious right now? That lovely piece of information is definitely going in my complaint letter. She actually used the word "bitch". Nice.
The rest of the tubes came out later in the day on Friday and I was finally free to walk around without a damn pole attached to me. Other then the douch-bag "nurse," having all those tubes in the entire length of my hospital stay was the worst part. You're stuck in a damn hospital gown until the catheter can come out and after that, although you can wear your own clothes, you're still dragging this pole with you everywhere you go.
I was lucky enough to have my own room up until this point so when I found out someone was being put on the other side (although legit it's about 2ft away) of the room Friday night, I wasn't too concerned since it was my last night. I was wrong. I was exhausted from getting no sleep any of the nights I was in the hospital and I was super excited to get my first night's "sleep" in without having tubes sticking out everywhere. This roommate of mine could not have been any worse. Her husband stayed overnight with her so the two of them were talking in a normal, loud speaking voice up until after 11pm when they knew the lights on my side of the room were off a little after 9pm. Not only did they continue talking as if there wasn't another person trying to sleep in the next bed, but their TV was blasting like they were home on their couch. Great. Finally when they settled down after 11pm I thought this wasn't so bad and I would finally be able to sleep. NOPE. The patient's husband started snoring.
Side note: All those that know me know I need complete silence and darkness in order to have a decent night's sleep. Clearly I had none of this my entire stay at Sloan but I dealt with it. Snoring, however; snoring I CANNOT deal with.
When I say that this man was snoring so loud you could hear him down the hall, I'm not being my normal over-exaggerating self. It was horrible. I got out of bed and went down to the nurses station to state that this man was snoring and I couldn't sleep. I was given ear plugs. I figured I'd try them out. Seriously, they did absolutely nothing to muffle out the sound. I even tried listening to my iPod. Nope. Nothing helped. Long story short, I picked up my pillows and blankets and the fucking recovering CANCER PATIENT walked her ass down to the floor lobby and slept on the couch for a few hours because that was quieter then my room. I was livid. Are you fucking kidding me? This will clearly be going in my complaint letter as well. How anyone could allow someone who just had lung surgery to have to sleep on a couch in the common room of the floor instead of waking this IDIOT up and having HIM sleep on the fucking couch is beyond me. It makes me so heated to think about it now.
I wound up waking up (of course) a few hours into my stay on the couch and went back to my room. The snoring had gotten a little quieter but not by much. I just laid in bed with my ear plugs in and my eyes closed. This was fucking insanity.
The next morning I made it a point to tell the woman in the bed next to me that I slept on the couch last night because her husband kept me up all night. She said I should have said something so that he could go sleep on the couch. Ha. I didn't realize it was my job to kick someone out of their room. At this point all I could think was, get me the fuck out of here.
My parents picked me up around 10am on Saturday morning. I was so happy to be going home. All I can say is that this past week has SUCKED and the only thing I keep thinking is, what if they took out my entire lung? I can barely handle this let alone something that might have been 10x's worse. Every day is a struggle but like I said, today I felt the slightest bit of positive change. We'll see. I'll leave you with a picture of me with my "best friend" for 4 days (the pole):
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