Saturday 13 July 2013

May 2013 - the hospital stay

When I came to the next morning the state I looked became obvious. I had a massive thick bandage on the end of my nose, and two thick packing cotton things up each nostril (a bit like tampons). In order to perform Pituitary surgery, they go up the nose with cameras and tools and then in through the skull into the brain cavity. It is a clever idea and avoid cutting a big trap-door in your forehead. But as I came to find out, the nose is quite heavily damaged....but ultimately preferable I suppose.

One thing I missed out from the previous post was that after I came back up to the ward, I had a very serious nose bleed, massive amounts of blood lost from the operation site. It happens apparently, and copious amounts of ice applied to the area eventually stopped the bleeding, but it was a very worrying time to have blood flooding out of your nose and down the back of your throat. It even prompted the registrar to call the surgeon that performed the work at around 11pm just to check everything was going to be alright. He seemed certain it was....but I lost a lot of blood that night.

Lots of things I can't do now, have hot meals for starters, no drinking out of straws, no bending over, no heavy lifting. So stuck in a hospital bed, not being able to breathe through your nose and feeling pretty miserable. The staff on D-Neuro were the real stars, the ward was run like clockwork and was kept very clean and tidy. The drugs and food all turned up like clockwork and sitting with nothing else to do but watch the world go by, you realise just how much nursing staff earn their wages. They were really very good to me.

One thing you don't get very much of in hospital though, is sleep. So many noises, bleeps, alarms, buzzers, interruptions for observations and of course people in a poor state of health needing 24/7 care....many in a far worse state than me. I hated not sleeping, because it is the one thing I needed loads of. Never mind, I figured I wouldn't be here for ever!

After a couple of days it was time to take the packing out of my nostrils, the packing stayed in an extra day because of the massive bleeding I had before. So out they came along with lots more blood. In fact one of my nostrils bled all day, not as badly as the major bleed, but trickling out most of the day....more ice on order. Eventually it did stop, but throughout my stay kept on starting again, it was most off-putting. However it did at least make my nose a lot more comfortable, because it wasn't jam-packed full of cotton wool and nasty mess. Finally I'm making some progress, and I don't look so stupid with this massive cotton wool 'bumper' on the end of my nose. The end of my hospital stay was in sight!

No comments:

Post a Comment