Recovery at home

I'm still tired, lazy and don't want to type much. Good thing I type quickly.

For people who aren't on facebook, here's a couple of posts I did there:

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  Long time left to recover, 3 sets of incisions /w staple marks, 2 tube marks that look like open gaping gun bullet holes, a few tiny holes from injections, IV, and arterial catheters, epidural needle nerve damage. You know, the usual. ;-)

• lol. The thing that gets me is I don't seem to be growing back any pre-chemo hair yet... just growing long hairs that survived chemo. So pretty sparse up there...

Some additional hospital humour / stories:

• "Uh, did you know you're flashing people behind you?" (Nurse to me)
• Pulling out of nose tube (slowly), "Ok, that's a weird feeling, ow ow!", nurse stops, just makes it hurt more, "don't stop! keep pulling!", finish getting out tube. "whew! That wasn't fun."
• Nose tube caused a friction burn over the 5 days with the tape holding it too my nose, and some bloody boogers. I managed to get the nurse to replace the bandage after a bath revealed that there was some boogers under it. She replaced it with a see-through one, and it revealed that my left nostral still had a huge black mark under it, so I tried to replace the bandage myself (they had left some behind, silly nurses). So, I'd seen them rip the bandage multiple times by hand, and had done it myself too, so I figured, ok, I can do this... get the bandage off my nose, but it is still wrapped around the tube... and it won't rip (too moist from washings, sweat, other?) So only thing I can find sharp in the room is a safety pin, try to rip it with the safety pin... no luck. So now I have this big bandage hanging from the tube in my nose like a large booger. Great. On top of that, since it was off, I attempted to clean it... turns out it was massive scar / scab tissue that (even of this blog) isn't going anywhere soon. So, I attached a new bandage anyway, leaving the old one dangling (I had to put on a new one, as I felt the tube going in/out on its own!) At this point I'd done enough things to embarrass or anger my nurse, that I didn't want to call her (strange, I can't remember the other things...) so I took a stroll into the quad and looked for some scissors. Found another nurse, younger, more forgiving looking, and said, "I have a little problem" as I proceeded to blow upwards with my mouth causing the band-aid to blow in the wind. She laughed and asked who my nurse was. I refused to say and convinced her to just help me out. She cut off the first dangling one and applied a newer one (replacing my makeshift job) She did a much better job than I did.
• One of my room mates and I weren't that great for sleeping. I would start coughing or clearing my throat and his drugs would interpret that in his dreams as a confirmation of some question and he'd go "a-huh, yes", each time I did something like that, then he'd go into some sort of dream sequence that always ended up with him talking about if 'what time is it", "are the girls here yet" followed by him starting to remove medical stuff and attempting to dress and leave the hospital. I didn't catch onto the cause until the 3rd time, at which point any time he started with the dream sequence questions I'd have to tell him, "go back to sleep, its just a dream, we're still at St. Joe's hospital and it is 3am (for example)". His coughs and stuff cept me up, and I kept waking up hourly because my drugs caused me to break into a deep sweat every hour and then I'd have to reposition, or change my gown/sheets  (which would wake him up). Worst nights ever!

-- Shane