Hospital

It's day 5 of my stay in  Kaiser SF. I'd been hoping to post more from here to record the minutia,  but it's not been happening,  so let's look back now.

Jean drove  me down on Thursday morning and it  was a fairly easy trip down.  We checked in and headed up to the Ambulatory Services Unit on the 4th floor,  which has been my home ever since.

Everything was smooth and pretty painless leading up to the procedure,  and the operation itself went on the blink of an eye (for me,  at least! Much more stressful for Jean who had to be conscious throughout the five hour procedure! )

I woke up to a fair amount of pain and the usual hospital bed frustrations (Not being able to move,  pain when trying to get up and walk,  etc.) But I was able to walk up and back down the corridor that first night,  which was encouraging.

Main problem with the room has  been the heating.  It is either stiflingly hot or ice  cold and the thermostat doesn't really give you a clue as to what it is doing and any tiny adjustment causes a dramatic change.  That aside,  all the nursing and support staff have been great.

The ostomy bag. I'm not going to be stuck with it forever,  thank  god, but will have to wear the horrible thing until my  chemo is done.  I got some initial instruction on Friday on how everything works and it kind of made  sense in my head,  but on Saturday a nurse came to actually change the bag,  and the full reality started to sink in.

Basically,  a part  of my small intestine is now sticking out and I need to make sure that it is always covered and that the bag covering it doesn't get too full.  I'm sure it will become second  nature before long,  but right now it's just icky in the extreme.

Had a close call with my Mp3 player.  I've been carrying it around most of the time in the breast pocket of the hospital gown.  On Saturday one of the support team came to help me wash and change and,  of  course, I  forgot to pull it out and it went off to be laundered.  Fortunately,  I realized what had  happened before too  long,  and before the laundry had left the ward,  so a kind nurse was able to dig it out for me.

Sorry for any typos in this.  I'll try to fix them later,  writing this seems to have wiped me out!