It was a choppy night's sleep after surgery. I still had a lot of the anaesthetic narcotics in me that was catching up to me in waves. About every 15 minutes I awoke and was fairly lucid for another 15 or twenty minutes then once again lost contact with reality. This went on pretty much all night long, with sporadic shots of morphine from the pump. They also had me on continuous oxygen and saline, and occasional massive anaesthetic doses, stool softeners, and other unknown meds, too many to remember.
The overnight and day shift nurses, who were fantastic by the way, and so, so young checked my vitals regularly, refilled my water glass and emptied my urine catheter bag regularly. Between the saline IV drip and the cold water (my throat was so dry) they told me I passed three litres overnight.
Around mid-morning they pulled out the urine catheter - boy was that a relief. I had to concentrate considerably to get things flowing naturally again. It's hard enough peeing lying down anyway. It seems like there's some kind of built in float valve down there to prevent it from happening
In the morning the nurses noticed I was not using the morphine pump much, and debated amongst themselves about when to wean me off. I didn't really want to lose the best pain fighter that was available to me, but I also dislike falling off to sleep unannounced. As it was the pump stayed with me until about noon while they started giving me a pill substitute, Dilaudid, a morphine derivative. I was also sent down for a few X-rays on a stretcher just before removing the morphine, which was good because it was a stiff stretcher (no shocks) and quite a bumpy ride.
Anyway I felt pretty good Saturday morning and changed into some fresh clothes after they disconnected the IV line. Here's a picture of me looking fairly perky.
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