Venita's Home

Surgery for the left breast mastectomy/expander implant finished around 4PM. V had alot of pain/disorientation/dizziness in the recovery room. She was taken to a room on the surgery floor of the hospital around 5PM. (Not the 23-hour surgical ward; that was not available last night.)

Last night's pain was more severe than what she remembered from the first mastectomy. She thinks her pain threshhold has been lowered by the chemo. She was asking for percocet and morphine constantly. She couldn't move anything on the upper left side without pain. She would try to fall asleep, her left arm would spasm involuntarily, and the pain would bring her back awake. Finally, she asked for a sling. That helped to immobilize her left arm so that she got about an hour's sleep.

The anestheologist put V's IV's line in her foot. That's supposed to be the location for all future pricks and sticks because of the possibility of lymphedema in her arms from having had lymph nodes removed. But, using the feet seems to be an unacceptable solution because V's veins there are SOOOOO tiny. May need to go for the neck.

V's maid of honor Annie is here taking care of her. V's is indeed being pampered. She got to choose the dinner menu and Annie is out at the grocery right now. Annie also offered to clean up some of the mess in V's office, and because Annie and V are employed in the same field, there's a good chance V will take Annie up on the offer.

Jim has become an issue. Yesterday, 2 hours before V was scheduled to report for surgery, Jim called to say that he had been abused at the nursing home and wanted to come home NOW. V didn't have time to get to the bottom of the "he said/she said" thing, but she went to the home and tried to calm Jim down and asked him to behave himself. She also asked the nurse to ask the DR to order labs to see whether Jim's ammonia levels are off again.

After her surgery, V called Jim, and his confusion continued. He was unaware that V was in the hospital. V called the nurse's station and was given to Jim's nurse, who was quite short with V (or at least it seemed that way in V's anesthesia-fogged state). The nurse said that Jim's labs were completely normal and that he was not at all confused. She suggested that V should call Jim for reassurance that he was fine and not confused; V told the nurse that had just been done with a different outcome; and.....boy the whole thing went downhill from there.

This morning, V called Jim from the hospital but he didn't want to talk to her because he was eating breakfast. When V got home, there was a message on the phone from Jim saying that this was "unsatisfactory" and that he wanted to know where V was and why she was not answering the phone. V. needs to get this straightened out, but not today. Today, she's popping Percocet on top of Ibuprofen and Acetominophine and hoping to get some cat-snuggly sleep.