Day Two

Well, I'd said that I wasn't going to post again until after we see the doctor, but as of 9:00am we haven't seen him yet. If he's in surgery this morning we may not see him for a while.

Deb made it through the night OK, but didn't get as much rest as she'd have liked. From my own experiences post-surgery, I can't say I'm at all surprised. I woke up most of the times that Nurse Sara came in to check on her, medicate her, help her into the bathroom, empty the surgical drains (which she showed me how to do since that will become my job...hurray), or silence one of the various alarms on one of the various monitors. Still, I must have slept through a couple.

The worst thing to happen was this morning when the magic button stopped working. I'm referring to the self-medicate button on the morphine pump, which allows the patient to portion a dose at will as necessary every so often, with a built-in timer to keep you from overdoing it (I think it's set on a fifteen or twenty minute delay between doses). Anyway, at around 7:30am the vial of morphine hit empty and the pump went into alarm. Due to shift-change it took us an hour to get a nurse to respond, go look for the pump key and another vial (apparently in the possession of someone who had left the floor for "just a few minutes"), change the vial, and re-set the machine. I had at least been able to figure out which button on the machine would silence the alarm for twenty minutes at a time, but that was a difficult hour for Deb. At least she's dozing now.

I've heard the analogy that pain management is similar to driving a car (though I like to think of running a nuclear reactor or even a business). It is far, far easier to maintain control than it is to regain control. Better to make a series of small inputs along the way than to have to make large , if not radical inputs just before it goes into the ditch. Worse yet is having to haul it back out of the ditch. The car may run, but more than likely some damage has been done.

But from the sounds of her breathing, it seems like Deb's engine is running fine right now.