hospital emergency room

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Changes in Plans

I thought that I would get a chance to relax for a couple of days and over the weekend before starting back at work along with cranking up my physical therapy.  HA,HA,HA….FOOLISH MORTAL!

Instead, my wife wakes up on Saturday morning with excruciating pain in her left side and back.  I have my son take her to the hospital emergency room since the Urgent Cares are not open yet.  They decide to keep her overnight for observation and a CAT scan.  This shows that she has 7-8 kidney stones with one as big as 6.6 mm.  This was much too big to pass by itself.  She is scheduled for surgery on Monday and there goes the whole week.  Fortunately, with family helping out, I was able to make sure she was comfortable while they helped me at home with my knee replacement.

She was very worried on Monday when she went into surgery but she came out without issue.  The doctor was able to break up the stones and remove some along with placing a stint in her ureter to more easily pass the remaining stones.  She passed some pieces about the size of coarse sand and all went smoothly.  I was able to get to my first session of physical therapy before she went into surgery and was able to be with her the rest of that time.  She came home about 8 that night and was able to sleep in her own bed.  That seemed to make her feel so much better than staying in the hospital did.

Here we are now on Wednesday and she had the stint removed.  She is feeling so much better and like her normal self.   She is heading back to work tomorrow afternoon and I am going back to work tomorrow morning.  This will be a good test of how much both of us have recuperated.

I need to thank all of my family and friends for their help and sacrifice.

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Hospital stay and Inpatient Rehab

Well, I have to say that a full knee replacement is definitely something to do unless you absolutely, positively have tried everything else first.  I would not have changed my mind and am glad I did it but it is not something an elderly person should have to experience.  It just takes too much out of you.  I probably should have done this a year ago when I was in better shape.  I let it get to the point that my general health was being affected and that was too long.

Let’s talk about my hospital stay so far. First, I stayed up late (after midnight) on the night before helping my father-in-law with his computer issues. Not a good idea as I had to get up at 4 am to be at the hospital by 5:45 am. Draggingggg!!! Interestingly, I have found that I keep getting asked many of the same questions over and over that were answered in my initial registration. Specifically, about my flu shot and pneumonia shot. Apparently, even though you answered the question in registration, the system keeps prompting the nurses to ask. No big deal but I seems rather inefficient and does start to irritate a bit after so many repeats. (YES!! I RECEIVED MY FLU SHOT IN OCTOBER!!!!!!!)

My stay has been okay so far. I came in Monday, 3 March and here we are on Friday. I have noticed a tendency of mine to develop a mild fever every evening. It really started on Tuesday night and has been consistent every night since. I start to get very cold and need to wrap up about 6 pm and go to sleep early about 10 pm. Round about 4 am I wake up in a sweat and need to take the covers off. By morning, I feel fine again. I’ve been up every morning by 5:30 am.

A little side story. They have a “torture” device that they brought up to my room on Wednesday night. Your leg is mounted in it while you are laying in bed. It then moves and bends the leg for you. The tech set it at 40% which is the minimum (or so he thought). He turns it on. 40, 45, 50, 55. It isn’t stopping! 60, 65. IT ISN’T STOPPING! 70, 75. IT…ISN’T…STOPPING!!!!!!

Well, he got it to stop and brought it back down. THREE TIMES WE DID THIS FARCE! Finally, he called in someone who actually knew what they were doing and we got it working right.

I was supposed to start my rehab on Friday but they were concerned about the swelling in my knee (I think from the passive movement machine fiasco) so I was delayed a day so they could check me for blood clots first. I was cleared of that and started my rehab on Saturday instead.

The rehab was big on Saturday with eval of how straight and how much I could bend. Minor rehab on Sunday. Heavy on Monday and Tuesday with my exit on Wednesday.

I am now home and ready to start my out-patient rehab on Monday morning.