Surgery time

Yesterday was the day.. I arrived at The Avenue hospital at 11am for check in where I was taken to my room. Unfortunately the hospital is very full so I ended up in a shared room but thankfully my "room-mate" is a lovely lady who had knee surgery the day prior and has been a pleasure to be around.

Prior to surgery I showered with a special antiseptic wash. I put on my attractive hospital gown and waited in bed (see picture below). I was collected at 2pm and taken up to the theatre holding bay where I was greeted by a lovely theatre nurses. I spoke to the anaesthetist and of course was visited by my surgeon Jit. By this stage nerves had started to kick in but Jit has a magical way of putting me at ease. Before I knew it I was being taken through to theatre.

 

For the surgery I had a spinal block combined with a light anaesthetic. The benefit of this was complete numbness to the lower half of my body that remained after surgery - meaning I had no pain what-so-ever when I woke. What felt like a blink of the eyes I woke in recovery with my usual post-aesthetic shaking. With both legs numb I was feeling great. I was back on the ward by 6:30pm where my beautiful husband was waiting for me. Attached to me I had oxygen via a nose prong, a drip, a catheter and a "pain blast" which delivers pain relief directly into the surgical wound. I also had a pump at the end of the bed which is attached to a stocking like sleeve on each lower leg and every 20seconds one side inflates and deflates - squeezing my calf - helping to move the blood from my feet and legs to prevent DVT.

Over the next 5 hours the feeling gradually returned to both legs, transitioning from complete numbness --> to tingling --> to being able to move my toes --> then ankles --> and eventually normal sensation. I was given small sips of water but was not allowed to eat anything until the sensation had returned, meaning I went 19 hours without food. Boy did those sandwiches taste yum when I was able to eat at 1am.

I managed to get small cat naps throughout the night in between hourly obs (blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation etc) and checking my sensation / movement of my right leg. Initially I could not settle because of the noise that the calf compression pump made however after a while that along with the drip pump acted like white noise and helped me drift off to sleep. Usually being a side sleeper (with my preference being my right side) it felt awkward lying on my back with my head slightly elevated. One tip that I have found to be a god-send is using a neck pillow. It allowed me to completely rest my head and neck while being slightly upright

This morning the physiotherapist came to check in on me. I was given some gentle exercises of moving my ankles up and down, squeezing my quadriceps (thigh muscles) and to start trying to slide my heel up to my bottom (this is the one I find the most difficult and a little painful so I will have to take my timed build on it over the next few days). As my blood pressure has been good (I have done my best to have little sips of water often to stop my usual BP drop after surgery) I managed to sit on the edge of the bed and even stood up with a walking frame for a few minutes. The nurses changed my sheets and helped me to have a quick sponge bath and I was able to put on some pyjamas. 

So here I am sitting up in bed writing my blog feeling quite good. This early on it is all about rest to allow my bone to start to heal. I will most likely have an Xray done in the near future so I will try and get a copy to post on here so you can check out my new hardware!!