Surgery went well. I went down to theatre about 11.30, and came round in recovery at 13:05. After I’d been back on the ward for a while, physio came to give me some lovely plastic shoes to wear for a couple of weeks. She also gave me crutches instead of my stick. I had a little test walk across the bay and was ok. I needed the loo, so she said she’d walk me the 10-15m down the corridor. However, I’d only gone a couple of meters when they stopped me as I was leaving a blood trail from my left toe.
They got a wheelchair and took me back to the bay and gave me a bottle to pee in whilst they rang the surgeon. By this time there was a nice little puddle of blood on the floor. The surgeon came and said it wasn’t uncommon. Since it had been dressed in the sterile environment of theatre, he didn’t want it to be opened on the ward, so asked the nurse to simply add more dressing over the top. Consequently I have a huge dressing on the left compared to the right now.
The anaesthetic did a great job over night Friday and I was only really disturbed by my usual bladder requirements. I’ve been restricted to absolutely minimal movement for 2 days, with only trips to the loo etc allowed. Consequently I’ve spent most of the weekend watching TV, playing Xbox and doing bits on the laptop – and remembering to do my exercises to help prevent VTE.
By Saturday night I was starting to get more pain, both in my toes and my spinal pain was coming back, so I took a tramadol before bed. I had an uncomfortable night and was awake shortly after 4am. Cat helped to try to get me comfortable but I couldn’t get back to sleep. Having had my normal morning meds I was still in quite a lot of pain so I took another tramadol. By mid morning I was feeling quite spaced out. It shows how used to tramadol I’d become before as I’m on a much lower dose now than I was earlier in the year, and yet it seems to have far more of an effect on me.
By yesterday evening it was feeling like my dressings were quite tight and it was pretty painful when I came to bed about midnight so I took another tramadol. I thought I’d slept quite well when I woke to go to the loo, so was most disappointed to find it was only about 01:40. I got myself sorted again and back to sleep. I woke again about 5am in a lot of pain. My feet (well my left foot at least, but I presume the right would have felt the same if I could feel it) felt like they’d swollen in the dressings. Cat got an ice pack and I elevated them further. The combination of that and some pain relief has made a big difference, although it doesn’t look like I’ll be going back to sleep.