I did manage to get up and sit in the chair for awhile this afternoon.
About midnite last nite they started giving me respiratory therapy every four hours. (They make me inhale some drug that forces me to cough. (I understand it’s important to cough up the anesthesia so I don’t get pneumonia, but coughing is real painful now.)) (They also have me sucking on a device that measures how strongly I inhale, to re-inflate the lungs collapsed by the anesthesia.)
I am getting real tired of this tube they ran down my throat to suck the bile out until my body starts handling that again.
I am learning to love chipped ice. (That is the only thing they let me consume.)
Before the operation they put my legs in plastic "stockings" that fill with air and then empty, massaging the legs and helping to prevent blood clots from forming. (The first day it felt great, but now it has become a torture device.) (The thing that got me out of bed this afternoon was the idea of getting out of those "stockings" for awhile.)
2-1-94
(11pm) I am feeling much better and I spent most of the day out of bed.
They removed the tube from my throat. (Yeah!)
I walked a little. (I was so weak I could hardly stand up.) (Tis hard to believe I am a walker and a weight lifter!)
I just watched "Scent of a woman". (I can relate!) (Not having any hope of ever finding a girlfriend makes it hard to justify going on.)
I can sure see why writers get into morphine! (I have had lots of weird hallucinations! (In the one that stands out and that has repeated several times, I am floating and I approach a wall with millions of words written on it, but I can never quiet make out what any of it says.))
I have been leaving the tv on all nite set to the comedy channel, figuring the comedy might help with my recovery. (The speaker is in the remote with the call button, so I turn the volume down and lay it by my head so no one else is bothered.) (I can’t remember the dreams other than the sound tracks were from "Science Fiction Theatre 3000" with pictures filled in by my mind and the morphine.)
2-2-94
(10pm) I am feeling even better!
My bowels finally started moving again. (I never though I would worry about not having gas and a rumbling stomach.)
I finally got to eat food and drink water tonite. (Yeah!)
They removed the IV’s. (Also yeah!) (The potassium they have been feeding me burns and they had to put new needles in four or five times.)