Day After

     I woke up the day after surgery disoriented with the echoes of old memories still ricocheting around my mind.  I had an intense headache and as I tried to reconnect with my body and take stock of the situation, I discovered that my lips were swollen from the intubation, I had painful, swollen and scabbed over spots at various locations on my head, and instead of the small numb patch on the back of my neck I had been told to expect, the numbness included the left half of my lower skull and that ear.

   The brace they had put on me was not the kind  I had with my last spine surgery and not only could I only consume things through a straw, it kept slipping over my face, making it hard to breathe when I slept

   Although they had told me not to bring my usual meds, it quickly became a mess, with nurses bringing me morning meds at night and vice versa.  One nurse brought me Amlodipine, and would not listen when I told her I only take it in the winter, because I have Raynaud’s and cold makes the blood vessels in my hands constrict.  She kept insisting it was for my blood pressure, although she agreed with me that my blood pressure was fine.  Too exhausted to keep arguing, I took it anyway.  

    The biggest problem was the two medications they didn’t have.  Cevimeline is a drug that  counters the effects of Sjogren’s Syndrome by making the body produce saliva.  Without it, I have to take constant sips of water to reduce the discomfort of a very dry mouth.  The other one, Vilazodone, is a newer type of antidepressant that increases serotonin in the brain by both blocking reuptake like older drugs, but also stimulating specific serotonin inhibitors.  Unfortunately, it has a short half life, so you are not supposed to stop it suddenly because the brain needs time to readjust and the mood crash is brutal.   I have a lot of hospital experience and can usually manage things, but this was my second day without it and I got swept away by a wave of overwhelming sadness.  As much as I struggled to calm down, tears just kept flowing.

    A young surgeon showed up, looked at the incision and the drains, and cheerfully announced that they had gotten the whole tumor out, but we still had to wait for pathology results.  He was followed by a physical therapist.  A lot of people with spine problems have mobility issues because of the damage to the nerves that control their legs – I did too before my lower back surgery.  I was pretty sure that because this tumor was only affecting half of my face, I would be able to manage things like walking, but I had to prove it before they would let me out of the hospital.  The therapist handed me a walker and we made a couple of trips around the unit and tested out the stairs.  Stairs are a little tricky in a neck brace because you can’t look down, you have to feel where they are.

     Satisfied, the therapist returned me to my room.  Then began a battle with the nurses, who did not seem to know I had been cleared by PT, and kept trying to prevent me from getting up, including putting an alarm on my bed that went off if I even sat on the edge of the bed.

    Eventually, exhausted and miserable, I slipped back into a strange medicated sleep.