(To read my cancer story from the beginning start here – April / May 2018 – You Have Cancer)

Back on the Ward My 3rd Night in hospital

If you have read my previous posts you will know my 1st operation due to jaw cancer hadn’t gone too well, I had just had a 2nd, had been stuck in a lift in a hospital bed but was now back on my ward.

It must have been late afternoon when I got back to my ward, I was still feeling groggy from my op so just lay on my bed all afternoon.

By evening time I was already feeling a lot better so started playing around with
my bed controls more so I could be sat upright and look around my ward better.

It was a lovely ward, 4 beds, our own bathroom, nice big windows with lovely views and a great portable air conditioning unit which was a godsend as we were in a middle of a heatwave

3 of us had trachies so the only way of communication was by nods of the head, hand gestures and writing things down.

The nurses were all lovely, but some of the things they did weren’t 🙁

The 1st nasty thing, which became an everyday occurrence was the injection in the belly to stop blood clots, it wasn’t particularly the injection but the stinging afterwards, best way of describing it is like a bee sting for 5 minutes, despite the fact I was wearing a stocking 23 hours a day, I still had to have this injection every day.

The next nasty thing was the trachy cleaning.
I’d seen them doing it to the guy opposite to me but now it was my turn 🙁
They basically take the front part of, vacuum out the gunk with a suction tube then clean it like a pipe with a pipe cleaner, it was horrible.

By now it was getting late and I had to prepare for another horrid night of beeping, tubes, alarms, etc. including my feeding tube which was connected to my Peg and slowly feeding me for 9 hours throughout the night

I was also having the regular mouth inspections and 4 hourly temperature, blood pressure, heart rate checks.

It was nowhere near as bad as the previous night though and I think I actually got some sleep.

The next morning Mr Walton and his team came to see me again, he had another look in my mouth and though not 100% happy said it looked a lot better, boy was I relieved.

Next my nutritionist came to see me to see how I was getting on with the nightly feeds and show me how to use my PEG for fortisips, for the next few days my diet was an overnight feed through my PEG and 3 or 4 fortisips through the day.

After my nutritionist came my physio who gave be a walking frame, got me standing up and taking my 1st few steps, I was amazed really how easy this was, when I 1st learned I was having a bone removed from my leg I had visions of never walking properly again and being in a wheelchair.

She left me with the walking frame and some exercises to do and then my speech and language team came to see me. Although I had a trachy in still which meant I couldn’t talk they left me with some mouth exercises to do.

I was still very tired and spent all day in bed, but was already getting in to the routine of things and slept a lot better that night

Story continues here – The Infections and That Damned Heat

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