Hospital - First Night

Okay, so my only time in a hospital was the birth of our two kids. I've had anesthesia two times, once for wisdom teeth, and once for knee surgery but both of these were outpatient surgery. I went home the same day and never spent the night in a hospital. This time I was in for the real deal, unplanned event.

After my move into a private room, I finally was able to see my husband again. He hung around because he didn't have a car since our friend had brought us to ER. Our friend had gone back to Trussville shortly after dropping us off so he could be with the boys and they could ride all day. He came back in the evening with the boys. They stayed for a bit, then they all left, taking my husband back to Trussville to load up the trailer to drive back home to Huntsville. My son spent the next two nights with his friend. This was a big help to us since hubby drove back and forth to Huntsville to check on me for the next two days.

I called my sister in Montgomery to tell her the news. She was so sweet. She didn't have plans for New Year's Eve so she offered to come see me and said she might even plan to spend the night in town and come back to see me on New Year's Day. It felt good to talk to her and know she'd be coming to see me. She and her son would have fun in the hotel.

That first night I had hourly visits from my Personal Care Assistant (PCA) to monitor my vital signs; blood pressure and temperature taken every hour. Less frequently an RN would check on my IV fluids and morphine pump!!! Now let me tell you about this morphine pump. You push the button and it delivers a dose of morphine for pain. The machine is set to a certain dosage and time frequency. I didn't know all about it until the next day so for the first night I pushed the button about every hour. The next day I was told I could get a dose every 10 minutes but no more. The morphine pump was also a source of frequent problems. It was under lock & key so if there were problems, the pump would just beep until taken care of. Only the RN could deal with it, and sometimes it just took time.