Home from the hospital

Just a quick status blog.... I'm home from the hospital, got home Thursday afternoon. The surgery went really well, everything accomplished as we had hoped. And more good news, they have found no signs of cancer in my lymph nodes, so at this point it looks like I'm not going to need chemotherapy. You have no idea how good that was to hear. The stay in the hospital was without surprises, which is what you want in a hospital stay. Lots of pain, lots of pain medicine, lots of time to sleep but not much comfort to do so.... a few cute nurses seeing me at my best, etc.

There's a big difference in the quality of care you receive in the Trauma ICU and in the normal in-patient stay area. In Trauma ICU, few patients and more nurses, so the nurses have time to actually talk to you to find out how to make you feel better. When they say "you can have another pain shot in 1 hour", they'll be back in an hour to give you that shot. In the other area, lots of patients and too few nurses. While they were all nice, it's obvious there aren't enough of them to go around. When that hour is up and you're looking for your next pain med shot, it's sometimes an hour or 2 more before you get it unless you're ringing that bell to keep them on their toes. That sucks. Still, all things considered, the hospital stay was ok, and the nurses did a good job of taking care of me.

Now that I'm home, it's all about the healing. Vicodin is my friend....everything just hurts. Slow movements and no heavy lifting. Played the Wii today which was pretty effective in getting my mind off the pain, so I anticipate that happening more in the days ahead.

The other big adjustment right now is learning to live with my ostomy. If everything goes as it should, I'll be back in the hospital in 6 weeks to have it undone, but for now, that's something new to learn how to deal with. So far it hasn't been too bad, although I also haven't had to deal with it anywhere other than the hospital and my home. I've had to replace the bag a couple times because of leakage problems, so rather than the bags lasting about 5 days each, they're lasting me about 2. I'm sure that'll straighten up as I meet with my ET nurse to work out the kinks in the weeks to come.

Oh, another oddity.... right after surgery, the thumb, index, and middle finger on each hand were tingly and numb like they had fallen asleep. I woke up from surgery like that. Some of the nurses thought it might be from the epidural, but the doctor said no. The anesthesiologist said it was likely the length of time I was laying on my back with my arms outstretched kinda stretched out the nerves going to those fingers. I have noticed before that if I lay flat on my back, sometimes my hands start to fall asleep, so this seemed like a likely cause. In the hospital, we tried using pillows to redistribute the pressure on my back and that made the numbness gradually decrease. As of right now, there still is a little bit of a tingly sensation in my thumbs on both hands, and sometimes when I stretch my arms the tingling sensation increases a little, but hopefully that'll go away soon. It's not painful or anything, just a little annoying.

I guess I'm now officially part of that ever growing group of people... cancer survivor.

Anyway, I've been sitting long enough. Time to find my friend Vicodin and go lay down.
-jk