I then awoke to what seemed like a second later. The kind face of my male nurse was the first thing I saw. He quietly spoke to me, but I don't remember anything he said or anything in recovery. I came-to again in my hospital room. I was heavily medicated, so the next two days were kind of fuzzy. But not fuzzy enough! I do remember having the room mate from Hell! She was obnoxiously loud and had what seemed like entirely too many visitors. My room felt like Grand Central Station. I had just gotten out of surgery and all I could hear was her LOUD thick New York accent! She yapped on two phones the entire time. I had my nurse close the curtain and I didn't open it until my room mate went home. The funny thing was although I was completely annoyed by this lady, my husband was thoroughly amused by her. She gave a theatrical presentation for EVERYTHING! She enjoyed every minute of her hospital stay. I on the other hand just wanted some peace and quiet. Yeah, that wasn't happening. Fortunately I was on a dilaudid pump and that speared me some aggravation. Two days later, she was replaced by a nice, quiet little old lady. THANK YOU GOD!
I had a couple of mishaps during my stay. It's no wonder, because I had different doctors coming to see me every day. There obviously appeared to be NO communication between them and it was evident that they never bothered to read my chart. Personally, I am not fond of teaching hospitals.
My pain was in no way under control. Every time I complained of pain, they would say "well, you're not pushing your pump button". Hello??? I couldn't FIND the pump button. It was either hanging off my bed, or I would forget I even had one. For Pete's sake, I was still groggy from the anesthesia and they were putting me in charge of my own pain management?! Who ever came up with that dumb idea? The nurses were nowhere to be found. I could not imagine what it would have been like for me had Michael not been there. He did EVERYTHING for me! He was constantly chasing the nurses down because they would completely ignore my call light.. He should have been given an honorary Nursing degree!
My body was in constant need of water despite the fact that I had an IV. One morning I was so parched that my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. The water jug had never been filled during 3rd shift. I pressed the call button. No one ever came. Finally after waiting for two hours, I called Michael who was staying at a nearby hotel, and told him that I needed water. He got dressed and rushed over. Poor guy! I could not wait to get out of that Hell-Hole. I won't even tell you about the Foley-Catheter fiasco! Anyway, I had the surgery on a Wednesday and I was discharged on Sunday. It was Easter. They handed us prescriptions and sent us on our way. They said they could not fill the prescriptions because their hospital pharmacy was closed. WHAT?!!! We were dumbfounded. How in the world can a hospital pharmacy be closed?! Just my luck. We had a three hour trip home and had to FIND a drug store in a strange city on Easter Sunday! I vaguely remembered passing a CVS on the way there. Ahh, it was open. Michael filled the scripts, drugged me up with pain pills and muscle relaxers and laid me in the back of our van on a make-shift bed. Within minutes I was practically comatose. It was a beautiful thing!
