My angel nurse was pretty good company through that long first night that I was stuck in the hospital. I would have slept except she wouldn’t let me so instead I surfed the internet on my phone, watched endless informercials since I couldn’t turn the stupid TV off (and I felt bad asking her to do it), and had several conversations with her, one of which was debating the merits of Tempurpedic (I’m a fan and was really missing mine that night). She finally dragged me out of bed around 5AM after we negotiated an agreement that I would get up if she called my doctor’s resident and got her to a)write my discharge orders and b)remove the catheter.
Resident doctor came right away and agreed that I could leave soon but the order somehow didn’t get communicated to day nurse, henceforth to be known as Satan Nurse or SN for short.
SN clearly thought very highly of herself and her importance. I did not and she failed to understand that I was irritable and in pain since her method of administering pain medication was primarily to ignore me when I pushed the nurse call button. Seriously, she told me once that she was too busy. SN also decided to tell me that I would not be leaving until much later in the afternoon. Ummm, no. She sorted that out rather quickly after I set her straight. Convenient being on drugs, by the way. You can get by with a lot of bad behavior by using that excuse.
She did win one battle by making me attempt to eat breakfast although I did request a preemptive shot of anti-nausea meds first. The breakfast itself was rather horrid and I tried to talk J into eating some of it when he got there. He opted out. So did I.
I won the next skirmish by refusing to have my IV out until I got one last dose of the good stuff medicine before leaving and getting into a bouncy car for the ride home.
To make a long story short (I know – y’all are sighing with relief): J busted me out of there, brought me home,managed to get me upstairs, and put me to bed. At some point he went and filled all my prescriptions and proceeded to keep me drugged up and sleeping. Good thing J planned the entire week off to play nursemaid to me, Mr. Mom to Ava, and zookeeper to the menagerie.
Although I am a very easy sick person to take care of, if I do say so myself. Just toss me some crackers and grape kool-aid in every so often and I’m happy.
The pain level at home wasn’t too bad but narcotics were definitely needed for several days. I also developed an immediate and intense longing for a full length body pillow and J kindly made an emergency trip out to procure one.
And Ava’s reaction to all this? Well, that’s a whole ‘nother post.