{"id":121,"date":"2012-08-08T20:19:53","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T03:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/?p=121"},"modified":"2012-08-08T20:57:10","modified_gmt":"2012-08-09T03:57:10","slug":"hip-replaced-first-night-in-hospital-not-a-slumber-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/?p=121","title":{"rendered":"Hip Replaced – First Night in Hospital – NOT a Slumber Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Follow Up to the Hip Replacement Surgery – Evening of July 31 to Morning of Aug 1, 2012 (Day in Hospital)<\/p>\n

‘ Life at the Ward’<\/h4>\n

Arriving at the ward the evening of July 31 (Surgery Day) was a totally new experience to me. I was fortunate to be settled into a semi-private room to join another fellow who also had his hip replaced (his right – my left). His operation was earlier than mine, giving him opportunity to settle in and have a head-start on the recovery process.<\/p>\n

My first observation was a recognition of being cared for by an excellent, highly professional nursing staff – can’t say enough about the quality of care being provided.<\/p>\n

Of course, everything starts with the all important intravenous hook-ups, including a computer-aided dispenser of pain-killing morphine that can be triggered by the patient to manage coping with different pain levels (Patient-controlled analgesia (PCA)<\/a>).\u00a0 Blood testing and vitals monitoring is still carried out at a more frequent rate during the early hours of settling in after the surgery.<\/p>\n

One aspect of the monitoring includes ultrasound measurements of urine volume in the bladder. Several measurements were taken during the night hours and it was after midnight when I was confronted with the unpleasant truth – unless I could urinate myself (either in bed into the plastic urinal container with volume measurement markers or make it into the bathroom to do the same), the unappealing alternative would be a catheter insertion to drain my bladder. Although a bit shaky on my legs, I desperately maneuvered myself into the bathroom a couple of times with the unfamiliar two-wheeled walker to try and comply with doing the all-important ‘pee job’. Unfortunately, my specifically-called upon organ was too ‘dulled’ by the spinal anesthesia and the various pain-killing meds to give any kind of response – ‘it’ had shrivelled into the proverbial Seinfeld-referenced cold water specimen that just would not cooperate. I couldn’t avoid the inevitable – it was time for the catheter insertion. Although an extremely unpleasant sensation, I give great credit to my professional nurse who dealt with this challenge compassionately, matter-of-factly, and most expertly. She did an outstanding job and we successfully drained the bladder. Since the catheter stayed inserted for the remainder of the night (until 6:30 am), no further trips to the bathroom were a positive. However, with an inserted catheter that keeps draining the bladder, I had this unpleasant and constant sensation of ‘wetting the bed’ all night long – along with pain management, a definite hindrance to ‘pleasant dreams’.<\/p>\n

Thus endeth the first night – saying Good Bye to the terrific Night Shift.
\n7:00 am brought renewed monitoring activities, blood tests, vitals, etc.
\nA new day (Aug 1) and a turnover in nursing staff.<\/p>\n

Continued with Aug 1 Account of One Day to Get on Track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Follow Up to the Hip Replacement Surgery – Evening of July 31 to Morning of Aug 1, 2012 (Day in Hospital) ‘ Life at the Ward’ Arriving at the ward the evening of July 31 (Surgery Day) was a totally new experience to me. I was fortunate to be settled into a semi-private room to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwb.ca\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}