Organ Donation Chronicle - D plus 4 (3)

From Recovery to Exit

I’m up from the recovery room. Wife’s gone. And I’m in a lot of pain – more pain than I can remember ever. You’d think they’d cut me open and pulled something out? Oh yah they did. What a change. One moment I’m totally focused on composing myself for the operation. In a blink I’m in la-la fuzz land of the recovery, and in a couple of longer blinks I’m in the hell of the four pains. I’m using my brown pain button but the narcotic feeling isn’t helping things. I’m trying to figure out this whole bizarre world of the hospital with its noise and interruptions. My roommate, an older person in for a kidney crisis, watches Spanish language TV all night.

You keep getting different people, nurses and care assistants, as shift changes. You’re getting a handle on what to expect and what not to – all while dealing with intense pain and discomfort. In the morning the doctors come by and let you know things are fine. I had my best caregiver that morning. She gave me a sponge bath that was a total act of gentility and kindness. I later learned she had come from Peru where she had a degree in psychology, had come to the US seven years ago, had started as a cleaner in the hospital until she got here certificate to be a patient care assistant.

Slowly through that Thursday, it seemed that I was stabilizing. I was told that the key to showing the doctors that I was healthy enough to get out of the hospital would be when my digestive track showed proper elimination processes – meaning the passing gas and solid waste. As we entered the second evening, the gas was getting worse and worse. The pain was picking up again as the gas build up put pressure on the internal bruising. I was spiraling downhill in my spirits. My brother, the doctor, stopped by in the evening and reminded me that this was a natural process, that I needed to stop fighting things and that I should remember there were lots of people thinking about me and supporting me. I grabbed on to that. I wasn’t alone. I needed to let go and have confidence that I was supported.

Thursday night was a bad night. I was pushing myself to get up and get around because they old me that was a key getting the internal processes going again. There is just no way of simply falling asleep for any length of time. With great effort and pain, I would finally get myself into a position where my body was temporarily feeling comfortable (understanding that each movement, each shift brought some sort of sharp pain and required the negotiation one’s various tubes) and I would sleep for an hour or an hour and half. Then the body part arthritic body part (shoulder or hip) that was my main support would start crying out and I’d wake up or one of the many hospital disruptions would wake me up and I’d be aware of the pain all over again. I’d decide it was a good time get my ass up and move around. I was able to do this with help the first night and on my own thereafter. Then I’d get back into bed (painfully), use a breathing exercise tool (to encourage deep breathing to avoid pneumonia), try to sit up semi-lucid for a while, get tired, try to find a comfortable position. Doze off for an hour or so. Etc. Etc.

That night I also had a set back when a nurse put an IV tube in incorrectly and one of my left hand and wrist got all swollen. It took a day for that to go down and the hand could not only be barely used but I could no longer put pressure on it without pain that further restricted my ability to shift my position.

I started Friday still in lots of pain with the gas building up. But throughout the day my walking was paying efforts as gas started coming out the front. We needed help from a suppository to get things going the other direction but I finally got my breakthrough that night. My roommate was sent to a nursing home early that night and they moved me to the window side of the room – a bit cheerier. Big event in the late afternoon – they took out my catheter. I’d figured out how to unplug the IV machine, so I could move around on my own. With only me in the room, things were definitely more peaceful and I rested significantly better that night.

Very early Saturday morning, I got a new roommate, Dave. He was a really cool guy with a serious prostate infection that had sent him into a super high temperature. A bus driver for the Hartford transit system, he was a divorced father of two, still friendly with his ex and a love outdoor activities and food…and a frustration with the hospital system.

When my doctors came in during the morning they gave us unexpected news; we could be released – right then! One problem, we had nowhere to go. Based on what we’d been told, we’d made our reservations for the residence hotel in Manchester starting Sunday. Wife went to work (she’s become a master at playing the ‘he’s an organ donor’ card. The hotel said they could get us into a smoking room for one night and then put us in our non-smoking room starting Sunday. Somehow she got this upgraded to a non-smoking two room suite that we were able to stay in until Thursday for the same price as we originally quoted.

Getting out was another exercise in frustration. When we finally got the room committed, we told them we were going to discharge, but the doctor had already left the hospital. 45 minutes later I went to the nurse who had still not made the phone call. It took 3 hours until the final paper work was done. I had gotten myself changed and ready to go in the beginning. By the time we were leaving it was 5 in the evening and much colder than when we thought we were actually going to live. By the time we got to the hotel, I was incredibly cold. I jumped immediately into bed. Wife needed to go out and get my pain meds and some food. I could not get warm. Wife was gone for so long. I thought the pharmacy was across the street? I started to think that I was going into shock and that I was going to be sent back to the hospital with tubes put back in both ends and that Wife was in some parking lot lying bleeding. I was in as bad a state as I have ever been.

Wife came back after an hour and a half. I had started to warm up by then. As soon as I heard her come back, one fear was gone. She had bought some wonton soup for me and as soon as the warm soup hit with us together, I felt an almost instant transformation. We sat together in the living room type area of the suite, I with a heating pad. I was transformed and relaxed. I was out of the hospital and felt like I was back in the world.