Surgery and the rest...

Finally home from the hospital, and I'm feeling pretty rough. Glad to say that there's little to no pain in my hand, despite it being riddled with pins and wires. I've been having gut problems, owing to the opioids I've been on, and a gradual deterioration of my GI function since before my operation. Despite eating next to nothing, my bloating has become so bad that I've put on 3kg since being admitted to hospital and the pressure in my legs is phenomenal.

I had the joints in my hand fixed, and had platelets transfused as well. For the second time, I had an anaphylactic reaction to an IV product - this time, the third platelet pool. I was fully awake this time (as opposed to anaesthetised, like last time), and the experience was second to none. My vision went completely, I was seeing yellow fuzz, and my heart felt like it was beating out of my eardrums. I was incredibly dizzy and just felt like I was going to die. It all began with my body feeling really tingly and my skin feeling prickly, then the onset of a full-body rash.

I also suffered badly from being given morphine during theatre. My anaesthetist had said that I was in a lot of pain during the surgery (probably detected as a blood pressure rise), even though I was fully asleep and couldn't feel anything. Since an elevated blood pressure can be dangerous, they had to give me strong pain relief to decrease it. However, on awakening, I couldn't stop vomiting and was sick on nearly everything and everyone that came near me (sorry, I know that's really unpleasant!). My respiratory rate was very high, as was my heart rate - and they figured that I should have the morphine reversed with naloxone, and be sedated further with diazepam. I felt so much better with these two drugs, followed by a big dose of IV ondansetron for my nausea. I've never felt so scared in my life, but it was so comforting to have my consultant there throughout; it was the first time a consultant has been there with me, when I woke up, rather than being somewhere else in the room. She'd said she would stay with me throughout the operation and be there when I woke up, and she really meant it. I can't tell you just how much that means to me, and how relieved I was not to be alone.

Other than the transfusion reaction and the morphine saga, the operation went relatively well, given the circumstances. My surgeon thinks that it may have been too late, as what he found was a lot worse than what had shown on the scans. When he went in, he came to realise that there was almost no bone left, while the scans had shown a feasible amount of bony stock for the fixation. At the end, however, he said that it looked alright from the outside, but there was only a slim chance that the much-needed bone regrowth would occur. Of course, it was a shame, as I hadn't expected to hear this, but looking back. I wouldn't have changed my mind to go forward with the surgery. I'll write more a bit later on about how events unfolded from there. x