The night of the 23rd was pretty rough. The room was unbearably hot and the radiator was on. I knew that it was important for the room to be warm as it helps to maintain blood flow along the newly connected arteries into the new 'breast' tissues but the heat made everything else feel worse. I was woken hourly for the blood vessels in the new breast to be checked with a doppler (a small hand held ultrasound machine that can detect blood vessels) and the noise of it is almost deafening in the middle of the night in a quiet side room.
I felt nauseated, spaced out and sweaty but my pain was fairly minimal. They gave me IV paracetamol as I did not want to take any more morphine and felt too sick to swallow tablets. I also had a bag of ice that I kept on my head or my feet to try to cool me down a little. I had IV fluids running and the pump noise disrupted my sleep. They emptied my drains at midnight which added to the smell of old blood in the room (which really helped the nausea!) I found myself thinking in French and Spanish (neither of which I am at all fluent in) and then repeating the name of the operation over and over again trying to remember what the P stood for as the hours dragged by. Finally morning came and I was given IV antibiotics (to prevent infection rather than to treat it) and had my observations done (BP, Pulse, Temperature etc..)
I felt dreadful but tried to sit up to have some breakfast however, I nearly threw up at the first bite and didn't have any more. I managed to drink cold water but other than that I had nothing to eat or drink all day as I felt too awful. I was now down to 2 hourly doppler checks between which I mostly slept and carried on my operation name mantra like a crazy person.
After lunchtime came and went my family arrived but I felt so dreadful I couldn't bare to see anyone. It was so hot that I was essentially covered by a thin strip of bed sheet and the gamgee gauze over my left breast. The idea of my parents and brother seeing me in that state was horrifying so I told my husband to ask them not to come. My daughter freaked out when she saw me through the door because I was pale and groggy and had tubes coming out of me. She was able to calm down when she saw me open my eyes and try to talk to her but she needed a lot of reassurance from the nurses and her dad and they stayed for only a few minutes. I had unrealistically thought I would be out of bed, eating, drinking and chatting by the afternoon. I was not. The physio came to see me and I sent them away and I only called the nurses for more water or ice for my head.
It was the longest day of my life and I never thought I'd get through it. I regretted choosing the DIEP flap for the whole day and at 10pm when my friend popped in to see me after her shift I told her I wished I had had an implant. She texted my husband not to visit the next day and just held my hand to reassure me, I love her for that.
This was by far the worst day of the whole stay. I promise, it got better each day from here on out and others may have had a completely different experience to me because I've never had a general anaesthetic before so I can't be sure whether that was why I felt so dreadful. I do know that the heat didn't help but that I had not had morphine since the evening before in recovery. Needless to say I won't be rushing into having a general anaesthetic again any time soon!
I'll cover day 2 in my next post.
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