I had the operation very late on the Friday night. I was on the adult renal care ward while Sam was on the neonatal ward. I had to be taken in a wheelchair to see him on a different ward, where he was being looked after by specialist nurses. I was on a ward with a lot of very ill people, and I remember one poor old lady suffering from dementia who spent the nights shouting for her mum. That will live with me.
I was given morphine after the operation (around 12:30ish)but by 9am I was in huge pain and had been asking for more morphine since about 7am. They did not give me any more pain relief except for 2 paracetamol around 8am, but by that time they had taken away my water to be changed so I didn’t have any water with which to take the tablets, and I was too dehydrated to be able to take them without it. When my mum arrived around 10am she went to see them to ask for (demand!) more pain relief and within about 10 minutes I was having oral morphine every 2 hours which made a significant difference to my pain relief and mobility. When I came round from the operation I did not have a catheter so they had to put one in at my request.
I asked for toast for breakfast and instead was given 2 slices of stale bread (photo taken!) – this is all the food I was given despite not having eaten since having a ham sandwich at around 11pm on Thursday night, and knowing it would be all I had until lunchtime.
When I woke up that first morning after my operation my bag came off my stomach and I was covered in shit. Horrific. So distressing. A real moment of truth that my body had changed, totally.
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