The Day after Surgery

Joe had a restless night. Slept in between nurse visits for vitals, blood sugar level checks and moving him in the bed from side to side.  However, that meant that they were in doing something about every 30 minutes.  Amazing how bright the florescent lights in this room are.  Today the nurses did get him out of bed and sitting up in the recliner.  He was in a lot of pain getting up and soon after getting in the chair complained of nausea and they gave him the little pink kidney shaped container to hold under his chin.  Needless to say, that doesn't contain much, so after cleaning that up, they gave him a bath, changed his gown & socks and he settled in with a blanket to keep him warm.  He was still complaining about pain, so one of the doctors did come in and up his dosage.  He felt the effect within about 30 minutes and was no longer complaining.  He sat in the chair for about an hour before asking me to get the Nurse Assistant to help get him back in bed.  When Joe pulled back the blanket so he could start to stand up, he quickly noticed that his entire stomach was red and the gown was saturated with blood. The NA quickly, and I mean quickly, paged for Joe's two nurses, Katie & Martha.  Katie arrived as I fled the room (so much for being supportive huh?).  Seeing so much blood all over his stomach freaked both Joe and me out and I knew I would only be in the way so I just waited in the hall.  Martha arrived pretty quickly, Katie exited soon after only to return within about 2 minutes with one of the surgical residents in tow.  As it turns out it was just where the incision had been draining, but had pooled at the bottom of the dressing and during the activity of moving to chair and bathing, etc, the pooling had given way and thus the blood and ooze all over him.  They assured both of us, me in the hall a little freaked out and Joe in the room that this was perfectly normal.  The doctor removed the dressing, inspected the incision, they cleaned it and applied new dressing,  Joe was put in a new gown and back in bed within all of 20 minutes.

This happened about 45 minutes ago and since then 2 more doctors have been in, can't even begin to tell you what kind of docs, never seen them before, but they were all questioning him about pain levels, any problems, etc, etc.

Typing to calm down and think things through so please forgive misspellings.   Joe has just drifted off to a sound sleep for the first time today so I'm sure that within the next 15 minutes, a nurse or doctor is bound to come in and wake him up.  It always seems to happen that way.

Thank you for all the inquiries today about Joe.  I am trying to respond to as many as possible but it has been hectic thus far today.  If I don't respond to you, please do not be offended, sometimes it is just timing and sometimes it is just a bit too emotional for me.

Thank you for the prayers and get well wishes.  We are feeing the love.