Saturday was a better day, although it’s tough to tell the days apart since you never get to sleep in the hospital. I mean, you sleep in fits and starts, but with someone coming to check your vitals every 90-120 minutes, someone coming with meds every few hours (and not often enough), phone calls, visitors and exercise laps around the nursing station, it’s impossible to get meaningful rest or sleep.
Saturday started as my second consecutive Saturday where I was awakened at 6am so someone could take some blood. A month ago, the thought of that wouldn’t have made me squeemish. Now, it’s just what I do on Saturdays.
The nurses in the ward where my regular room was were awesome. I got great care, and as long as the last nurse kept the next nurse up to date on my meds so that I didn’t have another one of those heart fluid sack pain thingies, everything was pretty much okay.
A note here about surgical shaving. I’ve heard all kinds of folks say all kinds of things about how bad it is and how itchy it is and everything else, and I don’t get it. I was a little distracted from my groin shaving by the excrutiating and consistent pain throughout my chest where a man and a team of robots had torn me apart to rebuild me.
So, Saturday was basically a day of finally getting a solid (albeit clear) meal. I also made many many laps around the nurse’s station and worked hard to get back my lung capacity. It seems that to make room to poke around in my chest cavity, it was necessary to deflate my left lung and when you do that, there’s a risk of pneumonia unless the lung is exercised and coughed regularly and frequently. I have this super cool breathing machine that I am still using and that I used 10 times every hour while I was there. (I used it far more than that since I wanted to exceed their expectations, but bragging about being great in the breathing gym seems pretty pathetic, so I pretty much leave that out when I’m telling the story out loud).
Well, since I’ve gone to the trouble to brag about the breathing gym, let me introduce you to the AirLife Volumetric Incentive Spirometer - without valve - 4000ml
Like I said, I don’t want to brag, but I’ve maxed this thing out on several occasions since I’ve returned home. Heck, sitting down in a chair blogging with one hand, I just knocked out 3250ml of lung capacity baby. Maybe after you get yours, I could spot you while you work to be as awesome as me.
Anyway, my plan Saturday was to chill out, watch a ton of football and the Busch race, eat a solid meal or two, and get ready for the good news that would have me going home on Sunday.
What Saturday turned into was a painful day that saw me sleep through one of the better Auburn-Georgia games of recent history.
Starting when I first had my chest pain and got my cardiac catheterization, I was immediately placed on beta blockers to keep my blood pressure down and Zocor to lower my cholesterol. I imagine that these two things are pretty standard among the cardiacly impaired octogenarians that usually have this thing done.
The trouble is, I have neither high blood pressure nor high cholesterol. My blood pressure is consistently between 110 over 70 and 125 over 80 and my cholesterol, as I bragged earlier, was recently measured two hours after a Zaxby’s lunch at 144.
Anyway, the side effect of the Zocor in some patience is extreme, profuse (and unbearable) abdominal gas and cramping.
Yay.
How did I find this out, you might ask? Easy. I took Zocor Thursday night, Friday night, and by Saturday night (when I also took one), the pain was worse than anything I’d ever felt gastrally speaking.
And there was another problem. This was not heavy gas, but apparently very light gas. Meaning when I’d lay down flat on my back, I’d feel it rumble and move and make all sorts of noise like I was ready to “purge the system”, but as soon as I’d get up and rush to the head, the gas would surge back upward toward my stomach and away from the exit area. This went on and on until my gut was hard as a rock and I couldn’t sit, lay or stand.
The nurses suggested I take a Gas-X or some Mylicon. Yes, the Mylicon you give your two month old for gas. For the record, the Mylicon worked…a little. The Gas-X didn’t work, and the nurses admitted that it never does. Thanks.
Finally, I had an idea, I figured if I could lay across my bed on a pillow or two and use the pillows as sort of a rolling pin to help “urge” the gas to the bottom of the system, maybe I could get it close enough so that by the time I rushed to the head to expel it, I could rid the system of some of it.
(Why not just fart in bed you might ask? Easy. I hadn’t yet had a “movement,” and had been warned that any efforts like that might result in some explosive results, and since I didn’t want to be the 37 year old that had to push the call button and say “Uh ma’am, I just shit the bed in room 333.”)
So I spent most of the early, middle and late afternoon and early evening leaning over the bed with my bare ass pointed at the window rolling to and fro, getting as close as I dared to shitting the wall in my room, then rushing to the head repeating this process until I decided I could live with it.
Oh, and there’s nothing like bragging to your dad who’s visiting you about being able to fart finally.
So this went on and on and on until I finally felt good enough to sleep. Which was about 10 minutes into the Auburn-Georgia game.
I woke about 10 minutes into the second half, only to fall asleep again.
I woke for the last time with about 2:18 to go in the game, and pops was on his way out to get my percocet.
“Relax, man. You stayed all this time to watch the end. I can wait a few minutes.”
And we watched the last 2:18 together, and Auburn won.
Saturday was a good day.
(One final note about the Zocor. I took one Sunday too, and finally Monday when I called the Doctor’s office and they told me to stop taking them, and the pain finally eased and I was normal again by Tuesday).
What say you?