Everything I don\’t miss about the hospital

Wow, a week from surgery already! Leg is actually feeling much better today. A good good thing! Anyway, here\’s what you missed:

FRI 9-17: Got to hospital around 6:30am, gahh. Got some bloodwork done, waited around and did a crossword, changed into gown and stuff and got on the gurney so they could do the IV and epidural and all. Hoping to not be conscious for the epidural catheter insertion but no such luck! Owwww. They didn\’t actually put me to sleep until after I was in the operating room so that was kinda neat to see. I asked to see the prosthesis but it was still boxed up so my surgeon said he would take a picture of it for me and apparently he did, along with a picture of my bone/tumor after it was removed and my leg after it was cut open. AH. I haven\’t seen them yet but he showed my parents. So went under for I guess 7 hours or something (looong operation) and they woke me up still in the OR. Don\’t worry, made sure the first thing I asked was if they left any wristwatches in my leg. (Answer: No, just rings!) No room for me in the inn, I mean hospital, so I spent the night in the recovery room with a very squeaky voice and very numb legs. Also very annoying because I kept waking up and I had no concept of the time, so I kept asking my nurse, and hate it when I think I\’ve slept half the night already and it\’s been like half an hour. Very, very long night.

SAT & SUN: Fell asleep a lot. Nothing too exciting (that I can remember, anyway).

MON: Got all three tubes out! I had a drainage tube in my thigh (yuck), the epidural catheter in my back, and uh, another catheter so I could pee. Then had a very bad night because didn\’t go to sleep till around 1am, and had to use morphine to get any sleep at all, though that made me see weird and scary things when I closed my eyes, and then I woke up every hour, and then for some reason 4am is the designated blood-drawing time and of COURSE my port would not cooperate and I don\’t think the nurse had much of a clue as to what she was doing and she bothered with this for at least an hour and then brought in an even more clueless person and finally I told them I NEED A BREAK and they just unaccessed my port and my mom went back to sleep and I watched back-to-back \”Saved by the Bell\” at 7am and was just about to drift off to sweet sleep when they brought in breakfast. Goodness.

Okay, too lazy to finish this tonight. Also getting very long, I know. Hi, I\’m Lauren, I rant. Anyway I must just add that for some unknown reason I threw up tonight. Man. It\’s been like a month and a half I think since the last time. Where did that come from! Also am getting so sick of being mostly bedridden. Miss you, ability to walk!