The Cute and the Fugly

(or)

Twelve Hours to Fugly

My stay in the hospital lasted only nine days. We were all very surprised at how quickly I was released, as we were told time and again to expect to spend 2-3 weeks in the hospital. I received my transplant late evening on Wednesday the 24th of Feb and was released on Friday, March 5th. Let me tell you; being in the hospital suuuuucks! I have learned many MANY things that will be useful to me in my rold as a nurse, from being a patient:

Just because a patient falls asleep after receiving IV pain medicine does NOT mean their pain was relieved. If they say the medicine didn't work; please eventually try another medication. And oral meds really do sometimes work better than IV! When they switched me from IV Dilaudid (which made me super sleepy but did nothing for my pain) to Oral Dilaudid, I got much better pain relief, in just one dose. That is so amazing to me, as a Recovery Room nurse!

Hospital Macaroni and Cheese is awful.

Low Sodium diets should be used only as part of the punishment for Death Row inmates.

Choices are good. Patients want choices. Just give us one iota of control, and we will think you're the greatest nurse. Or doc.

Sometimes a patient just wants to talk. Or listen to someone else talk. One night I was just feeling lonely, and I told my nurse "I just want to talk." This angel looked at me, pulled up a chair and said, "What's up, Chicken Butt?" and chatted with me for 20 minutes. We talked about whatever came up. That she took those 20 minutes just to keep me company made a world of difference that late night. It still does. "What's up, Chicken Butt?"

When your husband shows up at your bedside at 2:30am, fresh from a shower and smelling like soap just because he was worried about you and couldn't wait to see you, he becomes your knight in shining armor all over again. It was like a dream: I couldn't believe he was there, and I was so happy to see him!

That little blow-thingy, the Incentive Spirometer, is harder to use than it looks!

The TV channel button and the "Call Nurse" button should NOT be within two inches of each other, particularly when a patient is on large amounts narcotics. It makes for bad relations.

It is really, really important that you put the bedside table close to the bedside when you leave the patient's room. Everything we want and need in the world is on that table....but we don't need it until it's out of our reach. That sucks.

When a patient has a foley catheter, they really CAN feel every tug and movement down the entire length of the tubing and all the way to the bag. Yowza!! And I thought it was just men being sensitive!

Clean, tight sheets on a bed make all the difference between feeling human and feeling homeless. Thanks, Mom, Ingrid and Ron! You guys made my bed every time I got up!

You know those annoying patients who say "I'm sensitive to adhesive!" "No tape!" I'm here to tell you: I'm one of them now, and I believe in Coban! My flesh was being torn off in layers. COBAN RULES.

The Surgical Team and the Pain Management Team have goals that are at complete odds with each other when it comes to the management of your pain. The surgical team wants you to take enough pain medication so that you can do the work you need to do in order to heal and get the hell out of the hospital. In my case it was those little things, like coughing, deep breathing, and getting out of bed with an 18 inch, flip-top, Pez Dispenser incision across my entire chest and four chest tubes poking around inside me. In contrast: the entire goal of the Pain Management team is to rid the world of the scourge of narcotic use and get everyone on Tylenol as fast as possible, regardless of what their pain level is, and no matter what the cost to the rehabilitation of the patient. Needless to say, I fired the Pain Management team and told Surgery I wanted them to handle my pain medications. Yes: you CAN do that as the patient. The worry of addiction is not at issue when you haven't even left the hospital yet. The Pain Management docs didn't like me much, either. I prefer to call them Pain Medicine Control physicians, rather than Pain Management physicians. "Pain Nazis" would be appropriate too...just maybe not to their faces.

Save every receipt. You'll be happy you did. Almost everything can be deducted as a medical expense, and it adds up. Quick.

No matter how cute you looked going in to surgery (I did!), you will look like HELL when you come out (I did...) Surgery is NOT pretty, so don't even try. Leave your vanity at the door, 'cuz you gonna be FUGLY for a while when you come out. That's just the way it is.

Yes, a stay in the hospital is the ultimate lesson in humility, losing your modesty, sharing bodily functions, and talking about the most intimate of details. I know there are those who think they could never - that they would die before succumbing to that level of indignity (I'm related to several of you,) but really - after a while you don't even care. When you really need the help; when you are that vulnerable - you don't care: you just need. And you are just grateful that there are people around you who are either knowledgeable enough or who love you enough to give you what you need, because you know that you would fail without them. It is a truly humbling experience, and it will bring a new perspective to you.