Monday, December 24, 2007

My throat is dry.

The next few days were a blur. I was in ICU for about a day or two. I believe I left there on the 22nd late at night. I remember them rolling my bed up to the 4th floor. The room they had me in was small. The walls were painted white on one side and a ugly shade of purple on the other. Made the room seem smaller. The bathroom was on the corner of the room near the door to the hallway. Not that I would see the bathroom as I had a catheter in me now. The room also included three chairs. One that reclines and was used for me, one that pulls out and a guest could sleep on it and the other for whatever.

I remember as they lifted me from one bed to another that they had an EKG machine at the ready. No issue there but my heart rate was high. 150 beats a minute. Could be stress. I was hooked up to some IVs on both my right and left hand. In fact, my right hand was in some sort of cast in which several IV sites could be used.

My face did swell up to a big balloon, chestnut, watermelon, you name it. I am not comfortable yet with what happened hence the black lines.

Me three days after operation. Yes I took out my eyes.


Over the next day or two my throat got very dry. I was on some sort of liquid solution as nourishment's. They tired to get me to swallow water but I would end up coughing. In fact they even tried to get me to eat solid foods. I laughed at them. What are they kidding. SOLID FOODS?


I used a saline solution to keep my throat as moist as possible. It helped to a point. I would have to use it almost every 10 minutes to work properly. It was especially hard when I would wake up in the morning to an extra dry throat that I could hardly speak. In fact, the nurse could not understand me when I called to get help to use the bathroom that she had to come into my room and ask what I needed. This was after she hung up on my. In which I gave it to her and everyone who came into the room that night with what little speech I had. Never hang up on a girl who just got operated on. NEVER!


I had a few visitors over the few days. Carol from Physical therapy came back and helped me get out of the room. Which I appreciated as I could only have four ugly walls for so long. I still could not walk as I had a cast on my left with a drain, so she ended up rolling me on a wheel chair around the halls. I had a speech pathologist come by and go over my speech and my ability or lack there off for swallowing. She was not very helpful. She kind of gave me the work through it speech. It was not until the doctor on call that came by and helped me get a comfortable swallowing position. Turn my head to the right, take a breath and swallow. And you know what? It worked? I could swallow, carefully but with success. It felt good and my throat would become less dry. Thank god. Things were looking good...

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