And now things start to get fuzzy.
Despite my best intentions, there’s no good way to keep track of a hospital stay that includes massive doses of narcotics, some fairly serious pain and limited mobility. Well, I guess a personal recording device of some sort would have worked, but I didn’t think of that, and no one was running to get me one at that point either.
During the night, I was taken from my bed and got into a chair (more or less) under my own power. That in itself wasn’t too bad. What happened after that however, was.
After returning to my bed, I began having some “moderate” pain in my chest. Not heart attack pain. But more pain than I’d probably felt in my lifetime and I didn’t know what was causing it.
As I’ve mentioned before, all of these places use a scale of one to ten to measure your pain, with one being a little pain and ten being the worst pain imaginable.
Before being in this place, I’d have called the pain about an eight. Since then, I’d learned that it was only a four or five. But with the staff not knowing what it was, the prospect of that number getting lower didn’t look good and I was feeling worse by the second. I had also basically had all the pain meds they could give me for about another two hours, so when they realized that I wasn’t at risk and was just going to have to get thru it, I was basically stuck there to survive my own pain tolerance for two more hours.
That’s when I met Jim. He had gone thru emergency quintuple the same day as my procedure and was in the bed to my left. We had talked a decent amount thru the night until this “thing” started, and at that point I became a less than desirable neighbor to Jim or the six other people forced to listen to my swearing and gasping for air.
And an amazing thing happened. A guy who had his own problems to worry about and his own pain courtesy of his own cracked sternum started asking me questions. Crazy questions. Personal questions. Just one question after another. And I kept wondering why he was fucking bothering me when I just wanted my god damned pain meds.
And the next thing I knew, it was two hours later, and I was given a xanax, two percocet, and a direct morphine injection.
And it made my pain go from about an eight to about a six point five.
I was getting pretty mad and pretty freaked out as well.
But that was when another angel (whose name I can’t recall) said “I think you’ve got some fluid issues in the sac around your heart and that pain is being caused by your lungs rubbing against your heart. I’m going to give you this anti-inflammatory injection (the name of which I can’t remember thanks to the Percocet), but within about 60 seconds, I was feeling better. In about five minutes, I knew that I was going to be okay.
Molly and many other folks came to visit me throught Friday despite the crazy visiting hours in the CVICU. Although I know they’re not crazy, they’re tough to deal with when your family has to wait two or three hours for a fifteen minute pop-in visit.
Based on the fact that I saw no tears, I knew that I was either going to die or that I was going to be fine.
I was told about mid-day that I’d be getting out of the CVICU and was put in a private CVICU room until my private regular room was ready. Before that however, they’d have to remove the line in my neck that went into my heart to keep accurate blood pressure, my remaining IV’s (except for one), and my chest tube.
Oh shit. I’ve heard about this. I’ve watched it on TV. This is going to suck suck suck suck suck.
And so my nurse started removing lines from my arms and neck and cleaning up around them.
And then she counted to three and removed the bloody disgusting mess that was my chest tube. And I felt literally nothing.
“Hey,” I thought. “This wasn’t bad at all.”
And let me tell you, my private ICU room kicked total ass. It was extra sealed so that when the door was closed, you couldn’t hear a thing. Not a peep. So my sleep was amazing, although short.
And that’s when I was awakened by the ince looking nurse who informed me that she was there to remove my catheter.
“Ummm….can that wait?”
“Nope,” she said. “It’s got to come out before you get your own room.”
Fine.
And that wasn’t bad either. Really. In about 60 minutes I had a chest tube and a catheter removed and they really weren’t bad at all.
Later, it was an uneventful trip to my own room where I continued my diet of water and percocet for the day.
What say you?