So heres how days in hospital tend to go.
6.30am- hook me up to my IV antibiotics and check BP etc
7:30am- Breakfast…..toast is the easiest thing to eat when move is difficult.
8:30am- ward round- this consists of the over night DR, the day Dr, nurses, physio, OT, trainee Drs, and sometimes the pharmacist. They go to every person on the ward and everyone gets an update. With me, they check the observation area, they are satisfied, tomorrow will be the first day the dressing comes down.
10:30 to 12:00 noon- the nurses do their rounds of bed wash, bed change. This is when dry shampoo comes into play. It is my new best friend.
12.00 noon- hook me up to some more IV antibiotics
12:30pm- lunch time. I tended to order what was the easiest thing to eat. This tended to be a sandwich. Not great for someone who rarely eats bread. For dessert i always got ice cream….since im under the bear hugger still….its so nice and cold, and cools me down. To be honest these early days, i felt queazy a lot so i didnt actually eat much at all, but i always had my ice cream. I think it amused the nurses.
2pm- its visiting time. Some of the girls came today. They were very much amused by the huge chart at the bottom of my bed. everyone else had a small folder in its holder, i got a massive chart on a board titled “FLAP OBSERVATIONS”. It was now the centre of many a joke! So from now on we are going to call the muscle/ skin graft area…the flap.
4pm- visiting finishes.
5pm- dinner time. Again order what ever is easiest to eat. ICE CREAM!!!
5:30pm- hook me up to more iv antibiotics
6pm- visiting time again. More friends came….again very amused by flap observations. ohhh HAHAHAHA !
8pm – visiting finished.
9pm- the night staff start work, and come to do their checks.
10pm- its late night coffee and cake time. Yes you can have cake at bedtime. This was barbaras favourite time. she tended to sleep the majority of the time, but as soon as it came to that time, she used to shoot up in bed and have not 1, but 2 pieces of cake.
11pm – lights out…..which means go to sleep. On the bay to the other side of ours were the men. They were so noisy. Snoring etc.
11:30pm- hook me up to yet more iv antibiotics.
this day i was pretty wiped out, i think finally everything had taken its toll on me, the accident, the 2 operations, the lack of sleep, the heat, and the visitors. As much as i loved seeing everyone, you can see from above you get very little time to actually rest in hospital. In between those main times, you also had your regular checks. On one of the checks today, i decided to take a picture of the flap.
for those of you who are squeamish….look away now………..
the big broken leg accident 