January 19: The day after

I already explained the morphine scare, but I should probably finish up my Saturday in the hospital.
After walking around for about 20 minutes, I went back to my room. I was still not taking any pain meds, so I was a little ucomfortable. The hardest thing was to get in and out of bed. That was incredibly painful! I finally figured out sometime Sunday morning that it was easier to climb in on my knees near my pillows, then roll slowly onto my back and scoot up as high as I could. Until I figured that out, I pretty much needed help getting in and out of bed.
The day was long. My catheter was removed and that was like heaven, being able to pee by myself! They kept trying to feed me a liquid diet (jello, broth and other nasty stuff) but I really had no appetite. I started a soft diet at lunch (flavorless mashed potatoes, carrots, something trying to pass for pudding, and meatloaf). I ate a little of everything but the meatloaf and it made me queasy. Dinner would be back to soup broth!
I have to admit, this was the most painful day that I spent in the hospital. A great deal of the pain came from being in an uncomfortable hsopital bed with bad pillows. I started taking Percocet that evening and that helped.
The 1st, 2nd and 3rd shift nurses were great. My 3rd shift nurse from Friday night was replaced by a wonderful woman named Odessa and I had no more issues with nurses for the rest of my stay.
"G" would be brought up to this floor today after spending 24 hours in ICU. According to everyone else, whenever they came in our rooms, the first question asked was how was the other one doing. I would be greatly relieved to see for myself that he was doing as well as everyone kept telling me. Surprisingly, he ended up in the room next to mine and we got to visit with each other when we could. It felt really good to see that he was doing well. It made any thing I went through worth it just to see him doing better than he had in months. Seeing him on dialysis 3x week was not only hard on him, but also on me. It tore me up emotionally to think that he would have to do this for the rest of his life.
A little note for Branden in case he is reading: thanks for taking care of your "other mother." I couldn't have done it without you there :)