Love for my resilience
I’m sitting up in my hospital bed and just had my morning x-ray. Hoping that today is my discharge day. 3rd surgery discharge within 7 months after never having surgery before September 16, 2021. Now I’m a pro. I’ve learned how to navigate this hospital floor and how to become a better advocate for what I need. When nurses tell me “no” for things that I’ve been able to do before, I can confidently push back. They’re learned to trust that I know myself.
My surgery was on Monday and after 3 surgeries, I can tell you that having a really good anesthesiologist is extremely important to make the process as smooth as it can be. I’ve had 2 not so great anesthesiologists—one that gave me ketamine during my 2nd procedure and one that decided to remove my epidural on day 2 of my recovery. Both situations were incredibly traumatic, but I learned from them. This time I told the anesthesiologist that I had a rough time waking from my last procedure—violently nodding my head right to left unwillingly while my eyes were still shut. I could hear the nurses observing me and not really knowing what to do, but I couldn’t stop it—-I didn’t have control of my muscles yet. They came over to hold my hear in its place and commented that they had never seen anything like that before. Inside my hear, I was battling with a river, underneath the surface, and my little girl self was terrified, trying to help us out from under the water. So this time anesthesiologist said I don’t need ketamine, he would leave that out—and it was much smoother waking up. There was a little aching in my chest from the chemicals they used. But other than that, the biggest thing I remember was seeing my friend Lariza in my room waiting for me in her cute little outfit. I do have an appreciation for cute outfits while I’m in the hospital. It’s such a treat for my eyes amongst all the beige walls and scrubs and hospital gowns. I so appreciate that I got to wake up to her Taurean esthetic. It may sound silly, but it really brought me joy.
Things were going pretty smoothly until Wednesday, went my nurse noticed that my epidural might be leaking a bit. She called the anesthesiologist to come check it out, and this dude asked no questions, just said it’s time for it to come out. Let me just paint the picture for you. This is Day 2 of recovery after lung surgery. I have a straight up garden hose lodged in between my ribs and into my chest cavity, stitched in place on my side. The epidural is the main thing that allows me to feel somewhat comfortable in that scenario and the anesthesiologist just takes it out. He tells me I can take oral meds for the pain. But at the same time, I’m feeling incredibly constipated, nauseous and have heartburn like I have never experiences before. I don’t like the oral pain meds. They make me even more nauseous, constipated and who knows what it would do to that heartburn. So I refuse to take them. And I tolerate increasingly stabbing, burny pain at the site where the tube enters my chest and ribs over the next 6-7 hours.. I ask if they put the epidural back in and they tell me no, not for medical reasons but for bureaucracy reasons—they’ve never done one on the floor before and they don’t have space in the schedule to take me in the OR. My nurse is frantically trying to call anesthesiologist on duty to convince him to do it for me…eventually they granted my wish. I find it pretty wild that I had to go through all that in order to not be in agonizing pain.
Wishing for healing for the planet and for all our bodies so that we don’t have to come to hospitals. And for those that must, I wish for proper, caring and listening providers. And that all patients have the courage and confidence in their own intuition to advocate for what they need.
.
