Kneecapped 2017, post-op

Chainsaw go ning-ning-ning-ning…

The deed was done Wednesday morning, and Friday afternoon I was back at the manor. I only got four hours of sleep Tuesday night, because Charlie wasn’t sleeping well and I got up with him. So I was already pretty well out of it when I got to the hospital at 6:15am, and don’t remember much of anything after shucking my clothes in the prep room, putting on the standard extra-drafty hospital gown that would be my home for the next however long, and getting stuck for the IV. When I came to (at least to myself), they had just deposited me in my room. And there I sat. Or laid, actually.

I had prepared a bag for the wife to bring, containing my iPad, Kindle, a charger, and cables. She neglected to bring it up when I first saw her, but I was still sleeping more than waking. The same foot massagers they had put on her when she did this a few years back were now buzzing and squeezing my own feet. So some hours went by quicker than expected, and soon she was back with the goodie bag. That first day was okay, except that the nurses were a little slow to get around to me. I picked at my lunch (dry turkey, some interesting potatoes, green beans, fruit), caught up on the dumpster fire that is the daily news these days, read a little, played some solitaire, and listened to all the noises that are part of a modern hospital facility (even one out in Sector 706).

Except for two bobbles that first day, where it took an hour for someone to come after I buzzed, and the day nurse didn't take me walking up the hallway, things went smoothly. But sleep, even with pain-killers, was kind of elusive. I kind of skimmed the surface of sleep, with repetitive dreams (mostly about work of all things). I finally sat up on the side of the bed to use the undignified bucket they give you to pee in, and nearly filled it, sometime around 4am.

Thursday was a little better. My appetite and the food both improved, an ombudsman asked us if we had any problems (I told them about the hour wait on Wed), a therapist came by, and I got to talk with some people on the Outside―the wife and Charlie, Mom, and the home therapist who would be coming by after I got home. Except for the two patients whose meds were maladjusted, and who could thus be heard from the other side of the hospital, of course. I kept running out the saline they kept putting in my IV, and actually did fill the 1-liter bucket once. On my third walk down the hall, I reached the nurses’ station and thus “graduated.”

So I came home Friday. Getting in and out of the minivan was harder than I hoped, but I made it into the manor and to the recliner. The first home therapy visit was this morning, and I’m left with a feeling of “I can do this.” If only I can make sure nothing gets infected…