by banjobuddy » 05 May 2017, 09:16
Day 9:
Considering my CRS cut an artery according to my GP and I lost 5 pints of blood (not kidding!), I'm doing a bit better. As I said, I spent 3 days in the hospital hooked up to drips and have two arms full of blood test puncture marks. My GP has also put me on two months worth of iron tablets as my heart rate is too high and I wear out very easily. She says take two a day, but I'm probably going to just have the one and compliment it with iron rich foods + two full sachets of Movicol every day. My incision wound is a little better and I'm only leaking a bit of blood now, which is a big improvement on the pools of the stuff I was lying in in hospital.
Let me just say, though, that my situation is VERY unusual. I don't know how it happened and this operation is still pretty minor in the scheme of things. Even I don't think I'll regret having it done, even though things have gone wrong in a fairly major way. On the plus side, my bowel motions are pretty good and I bled very little this morning after a fairly full largish motion.
As for soreness, the incision site (left side just beside the anus) is still pretty sore and I'm sure will be for quite a while. I can commiserate with you, Becka, I can imagine the stitches probably are pulling quite a bit - hang in there! As I said, mine was left open (sans stitches!), but with the blood loss, wish it had been stitched. If you're in doubt, about your stitches, pop in to your local medical practice and them have a look - it's not worth worrying about it.
As for cleaning, my wife volunteered to clean me up and she's been wonderful with doing all that, cooking/preparing meals and shopping for my meals. AJ, it sounds like you're making good progress, which must be very encouraging :-) As I said, my biggest issue at the moment is getting my iron levels back up again. Realistically this will probably take a while. I'm also getting stir crazy, lying on the couch watching endless telly - thank god for Netflicks and Virgin TV!
My wife thinks I should sue my CRS and the hospital as there were two fairly major mistakes. The first, cutting the artery and secondly the male nurse who made me get out of bed and stand there while he changed the sheets. Result, dizziness and blackout, with me lying on the floor and 7 or 8 hospital staff panicking around me. To be honest, though, I'm not a very litigious person and don't really want to go down that route.
Anyhow, we'll all get there eventually, despite setbacks. Hopefully by Christmas and probably earlier things will be a lot easier.