This morning was a battle of wills. Mine versus mine.
I had not had a shower since the morning of the surgery, five days ago. I woke up hourly last night to scratch the fire out of my head and swear if I did anything in the morning it was going to be: a.) take a hot shower or b.) shave my head ala Brittney and be done with it.
Oh, and also left out of the medical report from yesterday was the ever exciting detail that I managed to go to the bathroom. Now, knowing the whole catheter angle, that's not the milestone I'm mentioning. After reading the horror stories of this issue after surgery, I was delighted to discover this wasn't going to be problem for me. TMI maybe, but you get to a certain point where this kind of thing is a central topic of conversation among the post-operative crowd.
One other night note to self: change that third alarm's ring. I'd just left it on whatever song was already in there for my meds and nearly shot to the ceiling at 3:30 a.m. when the first strains of "Hard to Handle" started up. I am still wearing my sleep mask and earphones with my EasySleep app, so I'm covered in white noise of waterfall sounds directly into my ears all night to relax. Not so much when the alarm went off. I looked more like this:
I also still having the episodes where I'm startled awake, which is a bit annoying but I am able to fall right back to sleep and it doesn't appear to be leaving me sore in the mornings.
After the kids got off to school, it was time to tackle the big project of the day.
I felt NASTYYYYY.
See?
This is the "before" picture. My hair was coming out in clumps. On a happier note, I think I've just about got the log roll mastered in terms of getting in and out of bed with very little pain.
So I log rolled myself into sitting, then standing, then shuffling to the bathroom. We don't have a walk-in shower. We have one of those big soaking tubs that is a pretty high step over the edge and down into the base. This is not conducive to a woman who can't bend or bring her legs up. We'd first thought to put the plastic chair (that didn't sell in the garage sale) in the tub but after looking at that, we scrapped the idea. I won't lie, there were some high pitched, nearly crying moments here when I was getting light headed and frustrated and Bob was getting light headed and frustrated but together we figured out the best plan of attack was to spread a towel on the corner of the tub where I could sit and swivel one leg at a time slowly up, over, and into the shower, and then stand up. Man, those hot streams of water and shampoo were heavenly. The whole ordeal from log rolling up to log rolling back was half an hour max, but that's going to be it for me today.
Here is the very satisfied "after" comparison:
And between the sunlight on my shoulders and the flowers on my dresser, I am incredibly comfortable.
My constant companion keeps guard for me when Bob needs to attend to the rest of the house. He seems to have figured out that he is welcome as long as there's no going over me on the bed. The ladybug pillow pet and the tray table keep that area protected from any unwelcomed feline attention, too.
Day 5 has gold stars all over it and it's only 10:00 a.m. :)
I had not had a shower since the morning of the surgery, five days ago. I woke up hourly last night to scratch the fire out of my head and swear if I did anything in the morning it was going to be: a.) take a hot shower or b.) shave my head ala Brittney and be done with it.
Oh, and also left out of the medical report from yesterday was the ever exciting detail that I managed to go to the bathroom. Now, knowing the whole catheter angle, that's not the milestone I'm mentioning. After reading the horror stories of this issue after surgery, I was delighted to discover this wasn't going to be problem for me. TMI maybe, but you get to a certain point where this kind of thing is a central topic of conversation among the post-operative crowd.
One other night note to self: change that third alarm's ring. I'd just left it on whatever song was already in there for my meds and nearly shot to the ceiling at 3:30 a.m. when the first strains of "Hard to Handle" started up. I am still wearing my sleep mask and earphones with my EasySleep app, so I'm covered in white noise of waterfall sounds directly into my ears all night to relax. Not so much when the alarm went off. I looked more like this:
I also still having the episodes where I'm startled awake, which is a bit annoying but I am able to fall right back to sleep and it doesn't appear to be leaving me sore in the mornings.
After the kids got off to school, it was time to tackle the big project of the day.
I felt NASTYYYYY.
See?
So I log rolled myself into sitting, then standing, then shuffling to the bathroom. We don't have a walk-in shower. We have one of those big soaking tubs that is a pretty high step over the edge and down into the base. This is not conducive to a woman who can't bend or bring her legs up. We'd first thought to put the plastic chair (that didn't sell in the garage sale) in the tub but after looking at that, we scrapped the idea. I won't lie, there were some high pitched, nearly crying moments here when I was getting light headed and frustrated and Bob was getting light headed and frustrated but together we figured out the best plan of attack was to spread a towel on the corner of the tub where I could sit and swivel one leg at a time slowly up, over, and into the shower, and then stand up. Man, those hot streams of water and shampoo were heavenly. The whole ordeal from log rolling up to log rolling back was half an hour max, but that's going to be it for me today.
Here is the very satisfied "after" comparison:
And between the sunlight on my shoulders and the flowers on my dresser, I am incredibly comfortable.
My constant companion keeps guard for me when Bob needs to attend to the rest of the house. He seems to have figured out that he is welcome as long as there's no going over me on the bed. The ladybug pillow pet and the tray table keep that area protected from any unwelcomed feline attention, too.
Day 5 has gold stars all over it and it's only 10:00 a.m. :)
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