Published On:
January 26, 2010
Sneaky, sneaky--but at least I didn't have to use a bedpan! *shudder*
By the following morning I'd gotten better at being able to unhook and rehook myself (though the compression things were tough since I couldn't bend real well). Good thing, because just as I'd get comfortable and start to fall asleep, I'd have to get up again. It wasn't what you'd call a restful night.
On the up side, had I not been in the hospital overnight, therefore not being on an IV or being checked on by nurses, I might have ended up back in the hospital before too long. Apparently it's very easy to get pneumonia while recuperating from surgery (something about the anesthesia and lying prone for so long, etc.) and during the course of the night I spiked a fever and they MADE me get up and walk around the halls to try and keep fluid from settling in my lungs (as well as work out the irritation to my diaphragm). Plus there was this breathing thing I had to do--sorta like a game where you had to make the ball stay in this one area while you inhale and exhale. I hated doing it (because it hurt to breathe deeply) but I kept trying. It took most of a week before I could sustain it (and the rattle to go away when I breathed). Now I know what they meant by "death rattle" in all those period books!
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