Greetings!,
Last night I left the hospital about 9:30PM to get a couple of hours of rest before returning to the hospital by 3:15AM to help Donnie get ready for surgery. He usually has a rough time at night between 3AM-5AM so I wanted to be sure to be here incase he had issues. About 4AM here came the surges of pain. I am so glad I was here to help massage his legs and help him get up on the side of the bed. We got the pain meds and I got his personal hygiene going and finished in no time. He got a little snooze in but not very long. They started prepping him for surgery about 5:45AM and just about 3 minutes before the operating room people came to get him he hit a pain threshold that was so strong I have never seen it so bad yet. He was hanging on the bar above his bed and almost screaming for pain meds. The Pain Specialist came running in the room and quickly gave him a shot of Dilaudid. Within about 4 minutes he came down off of that threshold. That was terrible!!! Off to surgery we went. Surgery was a huge success according to Dr. Sohn, the plastic surgeon. He was able to get the wound closed and took off the wound vac and just put in a drain instead. They had to put a new hole in his left buttocks off to the side so he was complaining of pain there. I guess the ends justifies the means in this case. Don has had some real bad pain today but he expected it. They did give him some pain meds in the recovery room but not a whole lot. At least he wasn't dying for the first hour like before.
Of all days, today was the day I had to move all our stuff from one hotel room to another to save $20.00 per day on the charges. Since Mom and Julie are gone I just need one bed so I chose to move even though it was a pain. I still have quite a bit of Don's personal belongings that we recovered from the accident plus Julie had brought a lot of my things from all three of our places that I was going to bring out for the Winter. It was a ton of stuff and it took me over an hour to get the job done. All in all I was gone about 3 hours because I was waiting for a call from Social Security Disability and they were over an hour late calling me. Donnie called once to see where I was and he was in a lot of pain. I was just getting the last couple loads of stuff moved when he called. I hurried back up here but he was fast asleep. He woke up about 20 minutes after I returned. I didn't even take time to eat lunch so I could get back here as quick as possible.
I gave him a whole capsule of Valerian and a whole capsule of Vetiver to help him sleep. It worked for a 3 hour nap!! I was so excited. The nurses were so good about not waking him up for vitals or other things when they saw him sleeping. They just came back when he was awake. I decided around 5PM to sneak out to get a sandwich since I hadn't eaten anything but breakfast. I left Donnie a note to tell him I was gone and he was still asleep when I returned!!! His supper was here right beside him and he didn't know about it so it got pretty cold. He said he didn't have a very good appetite so he just ate a few bites and sent the rest back. I gave him another whole capsule of Valerian and Vetiver and he is sleeping once again. I plan on giving him this protocal on top of the meds because they don't seem to change his pain meds or up the dosage no matter how much we ask so this is the natural alternative for pain and sleep. It seems to be working so I am using it and they don't stop me from anything natural here. They almost encourage it so that is wonderful.
Well, I am exhausted from no sleep and a very stressful day.
We am signing off for tonight so we'll talk to you tomorrow,
Don and Carol
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