Hospital Living

Just a short post about what I packed and needed during my stays in the hospital.

-Moisturizer in a flip cap tube. It's so dry in the hospital and a pump top will leak everywhere
-Serious chapstick. None of that girly stuff, it's DRY in the hospital
-Dry shampoo. Next best thing to showering
-Baby wipes. See above.
-iPod/cell phone/laptop and CHARGERS. It's boring in the hospital. Also, don't bring expensive stuff unless you'll be in the room with it the whole time.
-Earplugs. It's so damn noisy in the hospital.
-Underwear. Shouldn't need to explain this
-Shorts. Even if they make you wear a hospital gown, you might be able to get away with a pair of shorts underneath which just all around makes me feel more dignified
-Nail file. Nothing worse than a scraggly nail you can't take care of
-Makeup. When your doctor is Dr. McGorgeous, you might find yourself throwing on a little mascara at 3am to prepare for his morning visit.

For fun

The lightbulb in my bedside lamp just burned out. Of course it did. Methinks crutching through the house in the dark to get a new one is a bad plan, so it looks like I'm stuck in the dark til morning.

Only me.

Home Sweet Home

I actually went home yesterday. A day early! I'm too cool for the hospital. Actually, I was just feeling really good and there was no reason to keep me.

Peeing- turns out I have a shy bladder. I threw a bit of a temper tantrum yesterday morning and demanded to be allowed to try in the bathroom. I had already tried on the bedside commode with no success and we were veering toward another catheter and a urology consult. So they agreed to let me try in the bathroom and it took me all of 30 seconds to make it happen.

Pain- so far so good. I've only taken 3 pain pills today, and I didn't even need the one this evening. I took it since I'm afraid I'll fall asleep and wake up in the morning in terrible pain, but I may be done with the painkillers tomorrow.

Followup- I see Dr. McGorgeous friday and get my plaster cast. I'm thinking orange would be pretty!

Alive!

Well, I made it through surgery #7. This was my first inpatient surgery, and I am very much still trapped in the hospital. It's officially Friday, although it's only 3am and I have a long day ahead of me, I should be going home tomorrow.

So how did things go? Lets start from the beginning.

First of all, no underwear. At all my other surgeries, I've kept my underwear on. Not the case here. Not too pleased with that.
Second of all, the nerve block. So the anesthesiologist explains everything to me, and tells me that there are a total of 4 injections, one of which stays in (the epidural). He also tells me he will give me a sedative to help me with the pain. There is an 87% chance the epidural will work. I'll go ahead and let you all guess that the sedative didn't work and neither did the epidural. Painful as hell.

The surgery itself was uneventful for me since I wasn't awake. Apparently Dr. McGorgeous found more scar tissue in there and wasn't able to get to the middle of the talus like we talked about on Friday, so he used part of the top of the talus. He had warned me about this pre-op, so I wasn't surprised.

Post op. Ug. Ew. I woke up and immediately knew the epidural in my leg had failed. It was a lot of pain and I was so out of it. I eventually got up to my room and settled and immediately needed to pee. So I got on a bedside commode and waited. And waited and waited and waited. And nothing would come out. So the nurses scanned my abdomen and I definitely had a full bladder. So they stuck a catheter in and drained me. Fun. An hour and a half later, my bladder was ready to EXPLODE, and I still couldn't make anything come out. So I got another catheter, this one has been in since then and I've been peeing in a bag. We are going to remove it today, I think, and see if my bladder has decided it wants to work again. If not, a urologist will come see me. Can we all REALLY hope this works today?

Whew

I had my echocardiogram on Monday. It is a sonogram of your heart, so I got to watch my own heart beating on the screen. It. Was. Awesome. Other than having my boob shoved around by the ultrasound tech as she was searching for the different views she needed, it was incredible to watch my heart pumping away.

As I was leaving, I asked when I should expect to hear the results. She told me I would hear within a week, and the news would come from Dr. BlueEyes, since he's the one that ordered the test. I replied with "No news is good news" and she smiled and said yes.

I knew that Dr. BlueEyes was out of the office on Monday, and I knew the test results could take a week to come back. So imagine my fear when a mere 5 hours later I had a missed call and a voice mail from Dr. BlueEyes secretary asking that I please call as soon as I get this message.

Even though he was out of the office, he had checked his tests results as a favor to me, since he knew I would probably be wondering, and they were just calling to tell me everything was fine! After that incident, I feel like I need another echo just to be sure!

Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome

I didn't want to mention anything until I knew whether or not it was true. A couple weeks ago, a friend who happens to be a doctor noticed how flexible my fingers are. This wasn't news to me, I've had really bendy joints my whole life. What I didn't know is that "really bendy joints" can be a symptom of a genetic disorder. Doctor-friend told me to mention this to my surgeon, who responded with "Well. That would explain a lot. Let's send you to Dr. BlueEyes, he's somewhat of a specialist in this disorder". So this morning, I went back to Dr. BlueEyes. He performed an exam and I scored a 9/9. I had my sister with me, and she also scored a 9/9. We think our brother has it as well. Essentially, there is a mutation in one of the genes that makes collagen. So a lot of our structural parts don't work right. Tendons, ligaments, scar tissue, etc. So the reason my ankle has been behaving this way? It's because I have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. There are some long term issues with this disorder. First and foremost, there is connective tissue in your heart (among other places). I am scheduled for an echocardiogram on Monday because people with EDS are more likely to have mitral valve prolapse and aortic aneurysms and all sorts of neat things. Also, Dr. McGorgeous won't operate til I get a clean bill of heart health. Also an issue is pregnancy. If I get pregnant, I will be considered high risk, since I will be more prone to miscarriage, as well as uterine prolapse and hemorrhage. This all sounds really bad, but to be honest, I'm more relieved than anything. At least after all this time I finally know WHY this is happening.