Bad Blogger Recaps ICU

I’m a bad blogger. I know. Attribute it to pure laziness. My only flaw. :)

A couple of weeks ago I met a woman who reminded me why I need to finish this blog. She was my age and about to go in for surgery. She was very scared & had a lot of questions for me. I did, too, once. If anyone out there is looking for insight into what they face with one of these surgeries, I want to paint every picture I can for them. So I’m going to re-cap everything I can. No promises on how long it will take me to do this or how frequently I’ll post.

Standing up never felt so awful

My second day in the ICU, I was visited by a physical therapist and an occupational therapist. The PT told me something that was about the worst thing I could possibly imagine. He was going to get me out of bed.

Nowadays, after scoliosis surgery, they want you up and moving as much as possible. If you’ve ever had this type of extensive surgery or been hit by a bus before, you know how ludicrous that sounds.

First thing I had to do was “log roll” to the side of the bed. I’d been rolling to one side or the other, with help from the nurses, every so often since I arrived in ICU. It’s one way to deal with the pain. My back would hurt so badly. I could only take so many pain pills or hit the morphine button so many times before I would beg my nurses for help. They’d roll me to my right or left side and tuck pillows all around me to keep me in one position comfortably. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.

Anyway, my PT wanted me to log roll. I rolled onto my left side [wince] then back to my back [ugh] and a little to the right. Then I’d go back and forth, back and forth, until I was on the edge of the bed. I remember thinking, “Like hell, I’m getting out of this bed.”

He then wanted me to try to prop up on my left hand (under me) and place my right hand across my body and near my left shoulder to push up while I swing my legs down off the bed to a seated position. He might as well have told me to somersault.

I kind of tried and nope. Wasn’t going to happen. He started to help. He was doing exactly what he was trained to do and doing nothing wrong, but his help hurt. I sat up, though. I’ll never ever EVER forget what that felt like. You know when you get x-rays and they drape those heavy vests over your shoulders for protection? It felt like I had on about a million of those. My body felt like it gained 200 pounds, and it was all weighted in my back.

Then, half holding onto a walker and half holding onto my PT while he and my parents offered encouragement, I stood up. And the heaviness on my body increased. My head instantly started hurting (as mentioned in another post). I took baby steps, really more like baby slides, to turn myself around and sit in the chair next to my bed.

Imagine someone tying a thick slat of wood to your back- one that runs almost the length of your spine so you couldn’t bend or move hardly at all. Now how would you sit in a chair? For the first time in my life, I had no clue how to sit. They propped pillows behind me, which helped, but I couldn’t relax into them. My body no longer folded appropriately to fit the chair. If you’ve seen me in the past 9 months, you know I can sit in a chair quite normally, with perfect posture, but back then, it was awkward and awful.

I had to sit in the chair for 30 minutes. One good thing came of this. Nurse Tricia, my favorite nurse ever, was there to help. Once I was in the chair, she looked at me and asked if I would like to have my hair brushed. During surgery, some tape had gotten meshed up in my hair. By this point, my hair was ratted and knotted and stuck to the tape. I was a mess. Nurse Tricia got a hair brush and some rubber bands from my mom. Slowly, gently, she picked the tape out of my hair and brushed out all the rats. She didn’t stop there either. She then French braided my hair into two braided tails. It was one of the nicest things anyone ever did for me. It sounds so simple, but it made me feel human and helped me to not feel so freaking awful. Then it was back to bed.

Panic

My surgeon came in a little later. He wanted to talk about the headache I had when I stood up. As Kelsey detailed in that other post, this wasn’t good. For the first time, I heard about the “hiccup” in surgery. Dr. Hostin wanted me to lay flat on my back in bed (no moving side to side or elevating my bed) for 24 hours and then they’d stand me up again. If the headache was still there, they would have to do the epidural blood patch (again, see Kelsey’s post). This did not sound fun.

I was really worried. The look on my mom’s face told me she was worried, too. I was so upset that of all the surgeries, something had to go wrong in mine. Then there was the lying flat. It is terribly hard not to move for an hour, much less a day. I felt so uncomfortable and the pain just started to collect and weigh down on my back and everywhere on my body that touched the bed.

That night (I think it was night, but really I had no sense of time), Kelsey brought Rachel and Shantel to visit me. I don’t remember a whole lot except I was in a pretty bad place when they arrived. I remember them petting me and trying to make me feel better. They brought me gifts. If you are reading this now, girls, it meant the world to me that you came to visit me. I was out of it, not very conversational, but I am so happy you came. Thank you.

Day 3

The next day the OT came back, and we did exercises in bed, which consisted of me moving my arms up and down (not past my shoulders, as this is not allowed). My internist came by and said all my organs seem to be ok after surgery.

My test happened that afternoon. The PT came in to get me out of bed. While still ridiculously uncomfortable to stand up, I didn’t get the headache rush. Everything was going to be ok.

I sat in the chair for an entire hour this time. OMG it sucked. Then, back to bed.

That day they decided I was out of the woods enough to be moved to PCU to recover more and start to learn to walk and take care of myself, all of which will (eventually) be mentioned on here.