Healing Well

This hospital is really nice. The nurses have all been friendly and attentive. My pain is under control. I have only one IV left now and it is not hooked up to anything, as I am drinking and eating on my own. The breathing thingy is not so bad. I've made progress with it already. Shoot, even the food is pretty good! This experience compared to my last thorecotomy at JHH is like night and day. Night and day!

I still have a Foley catheter, which is slightly annoying, but convenient, seeing as I do not have to get out of bed to pee. I also have 2 chest tubes, both of which are suctioning out all sorts of bloody fluid. I have been coughing and spitting up blood and phlegm. The nurses are very pleased with my coughing and spitting! They are also happy about my burping and have asked me if I have passed any gas. They want to make sure everything still works.

There was some itching and quite a lot of vomiting earlier, but the nurse who came in this morning halved my dose of Fentanyl, which is administered through my epidural, and the vomiting stopped. Thank goodness! The stuff I was vomiting up was disgusting--clear liquids with blood clots floating around. I guess the giant tube they put down my throat definitely caused damage. They had to put in an extra big tube so that they could collapse the right lung and work on it while still having me breathe through the left lung. I am still somewhat itchy, but I think it is more from the huge swaths of tape all over my body than from the drug.

Dr. Surgeon told us that they removed 3 tumors and thoroughly felt the lung for anything else. Two of them were regular adenocarcinoma and one was mostly mucus. He said the margins were clean. :) I do not know if I was clear in previous posts, but we thought there were only 2 nodules to remove, so number 3 was a surprise.

I am now out of the ICU, on a regular floor, and Captain Obvious is with me. We wanted to bring Captain Adorable, but he is a little sick, so they would not let him on the floor, unless he wore a mask. Yeah, like that's going to happen! Maybe tomorrow he can come. (Fingers crossed.) My darling Capt. Obvious was planning to spend the night here tonight, but I have a roommate, so he cannot. My nurse did say that she would check for empty rooms for me, so if I get my own room, he can stay. This would be great, but I am not going to count on it. So yeah, Deelux might be off the hook too (she had volunteered to stay with me if Capt. Obvious could not). Still, I am not too worried about this, as this hospital is Not At All like JHH or any other hospital I have ever been in.

OK, time for me to go do more on the breathing machine.