Snap Goes the Leg (sung to tune of Pop Goes the Weasel)

Day 4

2 PT sessions today. At this point it is less painful to get out of bed. I am not yelling anymore and only the occasional bad word exits my mouth.

The catheter was taken out and so on to bedpan it is. They used a fracture bedpan. These are specially made for people with fractures and so they are smaller and easier to get under the patient. So peeing was not that bad. Having the trapeze over my bed helped considerably.

As the day started I didn't know how worried my mother was until we heard that Dr. S would be in around 1pm. Around 12:20 Mark calls her from my room to tell her this. Of course this is the same day that they are trying to deliver wheelchairs and so forth to the house so someone has to be there. So rather than wait for Mark to get back and then leave my mother asks friends of ours to wait at the house while she and Mark drive to swap places. Needless to say she made it before Dr. S. Any way once he came to my room my mother did not have to put forth much of an argument because Dr. S said she’ll leave when you are all ready. We thought that might be around Sunday. Our guess is that someone at the hospital again got me mixed up with a THR patient. THRs tend to leave on day 4. So with a sigh of relief the day continued with far less worry.

The catheter came out at some point this day too. I had no idea that they actually inflate the tube to prevent it from coming out. So all that has to be done is deflating the tube and sliding it out. Again this is a procedure that has no pain attached to it. So do not worry. Of course the worry at this point is that you have to pee otherwise they will have to reinsert it and this is the part that no one really wants to be awake for. They give you about 6 hours to do this otherwise they will scan your bladder to see how full it is before deciding on whether to reinsert or not. The likelihood that I wouldn't be able to pee was rather slim. So about 2 hours later that worry flowed away.

After doing PT ones pain level is certain to rise. I believe I was transitioned from morphine to Percocet (AKA Oxycodone) on day 3. This is not that fun but at least I stopped itching. I believe I had to have another bolus or two during the first 12 hours to get the pain under control. So after PT ice packs really work well to help get the pain under control because the nurses do try hard to keep you on your med schedule and getting then to break it is virtually impossible.

Around 6pm that evening I was having a really hard time getting comfortable. We played with pillows, the incline and level of the bed trying every trick we had learned that far. My mother called the tech in to help and he managed to give me 10 minutes of relief but it started again. I was suffering from really intense muscle cramps in my quads and hamstrings. They were un-relentless and rather painful. After an hour and a half of trying to get comfortable, I believe we now had 2 nurses in the room trying to help, I remember grabbing the trapeze and pulling up. I made the mistake of arching my pelvis, which of course breaks the 30-70 degree rule. All of a sudden I felt the sensation of something unraveling in my leg and then shooting down my inner thigh to midway through my calf. The feeling was similar to an elastic band snapping down the inside of my leg . I screamed. It was the most terrified I have been through the last 4 days. At that moment I was sure that I had seriously messed something up and would have to go back into surgery. Everyone stopped what they were doing and in anxious voices asked what happened. I explained and one of the nurses asked if I still felt the same level of pain. In fact I did not.

Earlier that day my mother had asked Dr. S what was the difference between good pain and bad pain. His first response was there is no such thing as good pain. What my mother had meant is when should you worry and when should you take a breath, relax and wait to see what happens. He then said that good pain was the type of pain that happened and then dissipated rather quickly. Bad pain sticks around. So with this in mind the fact that my pain was diminishing meant not to worry. The miraculous thing at this point was my cramps diminished considerably too. This was my turning point in hospital. Of course I still wasn't sure what had happened but I would have to wait until Dr. S's visit the next day to find out.