Heading Home ... Maybe ... And Two Important Pieces of Advice

 Fingers crossed. My stupid intolerance for codeine (it makes me nauseous) could possibly interfere with going home today. I can tolerate the codeine as long as I take an anti-nausea drug along with it, but the anti-nausea medication interferes with heart rhythms, and so they won’t send that home with me. And I do still need the pain meds. I still have a bit of fluid in my lungs, and as long as I have pain, I’m not breathing fully, and the lung congestion could get worse. So I just took the new painkiller, Tramadol, and if I manage not to get nauseous, I can go home. The one downside is that I can’t take alcohol with it. I was really looking forward to a glass of wine. 

My first piece of advice is about the painkillers. For reasons that should be clear from the above, I don’t like them. But, after surgery, you really need them. The very odd thing is that the nurses keep asking me IF I want them. In fact, they ask me every 4 or 5 hours if I want the Tylenol ( the correct answer is, Yes, of course), but they frequently don’t mention the stronger stuff. If I don’t ask for it, they don’t offer it. Last night, I got the idea that maybe I should try to get through the night without the Oxycodone since I didn’t think they would give it to me to take at home  I mentioned that to the resident this morning after admitting that I’d only gotten a few hours of sleep, and he informed me that yes, they would give me an Oxy prescription for home if I wanted it, and it would be much more important to show that the pain is under control with the meds than to show that I could tolerate the pain without the meds. So I’m feeling much better and regularly demanding my pain meds. 

My second piece of advice involves scheduling. I was given the choice of having my surgery on a Thursday or the following Monday. I was so eager to get it over with that I chose Thursday. But that meant that a couple of significant recovery days happened over the weekend. And not to sound pathetic, but I did feel slightly abandoned by the grownups on Saturday and Sunday. Given a choice, choose a day early in the week. A quick talk with one of the surgeon’s nurse practitioners this morning restored my faith and bolstered my confidence. And she doesn’t work on the weekend.