G-J Kitty
CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of medical nature. Talk of feeding tubes. Some blood. You’re responsible for your own time on the Internet and you get to choose where and how you spend it. If reading medical posts will upset you please do not read further. If you’re interested, please go on.
I can’t imagine this will be a particularly long post, but I did want to make an update now that I am home from the hospital. There has been an incredibly long build-up to the fixing of my J tube, and it’s taken months upon months and the moving across state-lines to find someone qualified enough to handle it. However. I can’t say we were both 100% pleased with the outcome if I am honest with you. I mean, there’s a lot to process, and I have a lot of time to do just that because, honestly, this will take a long time to heal- months really.
The surgery itself was really long. I mean, yes, in the grand scheme of things there are much longer surgeries than mine was but Master Pravus was beginning to get worried because I have never had a surgery go for that long. After the five hour long surgery was done, they still wouldn’t let him back to see me because they couldn’t control my pain in PACU. And why couldn’t they control my pain in PACU? The epidural they tried to put in when I got to pre-op never functioned properly. I mean, I hear that epidurals are great when they work, but it didn’t work for me. It took them two full days before they eventually decided to remove it and try something else. What a nightmare. Open abdominal surgery with no pain relief for two days. Great. -.-
Anyway. I was at the hospital for four days and it was complete bedlam in there. I want to say this now, in my blog- and make a note to look back on. It’s wicked obvious from my standpoint that COVID is being used as a scapegoat for why they aren’t allowing caretakers into hospitals. They don’t want anyone to see the complete chaos going on by the nurse shortage. Should they allow visitors? I agree not. But Master Pravus knows my complicated medical history and has always been allowed to stay. Still, he wasn’t even allowed in pre-op and they had to keep sending a nurse down to ask him questions or to get supplies from him because their supplies didn’t work with my equipment. What a complete nightmare.
Unfortunately several of my family are also in the hospital right now, and they’re also seeing first hand how the hospitals are using COVID as a scapegoat instead of taking the proper precautions. Disabled patients need their caregivers. I’m sure there are some of you out there who are in the hospital or who have been recently and have seen this complete craziness first hand. They would tell me to buzz them for help to get to the bathroom (remember, I had open abdominal surgery!) and then I would buzz and nobody would come for an hour and a half so I would just go by myself. I would buzz for help getting completely reasonable things and nobody came ever. They don’t want family there because then they would have witnesses to what’s going on in there.
Honestly by the fourth day I was begging to leave. They had turned off my water infusions and were draining anything I ate into a drainage bag and I felt like ass. I asked them why they wouldn’t turn my infusions on and they just shrugged and said “the Boss” said to. Literally. The fuck?
Ah yes. Draining everything I ate into a bag. So I woke up from surgery with a G-J tube, which means they punched a hole in my stomach without telling me, giving me any idea that this would happen at all, or anything. Master Pravus and me were kind of… Not too pleased with this. But it’s there now. The surgeon said “Well, you don’t have to use the “g” part, but it might keep your tube more stable and stop it from dislodging. The bad part is it will clog more often.”
I mean. We were expecting a completely different type of tube that would lay flush against my skin. It was a complete shock to us both. We were stunned.
He did also tell us that I had a ton of adhesions in my intestines and that parts of my intestines were strangulated. People with strangulated intestines can die within hours. I was really lucky in a way because I was getting more and more listless and feeling more and more terrible and if they didn’t do the surgery when they did I don’t know what I would have done. It was really scary to hear.
I am glad they were able to fix all that, but neither me nor Master Pravus love how the surgeon took it upon himself to give me this brand new tube that we have been talked to about before and told by more than one surgeon wouldn’t be great for me. It was just.. A big shock.
On top of that, as I mentioned- the care at the hospital was absolutely terrible. They wouldn’t let me touch my own tube, and the nurse I had that night literally clogged it but refused to do anything about it and left it for the nurse on the next shift. Like literally, my brand new tube. Great.
So by day four things were so bad I begged them to let me go and they kept adding on more and more requirements but finally I got to leave at like 7PM on Tuesday. And now I’m at home, resting.
The only thing is, I’m having some kind of complication from the surgery that’s most likely due to them withholding some of my medicine. So now we’re working on getting that sorted and then hopefully (fingers crossed) things will all be back to normal around here. Because honestly that was the absolute worst hospital trip I’ve ever been on. Like, the actual surgery work that was done on me is healing in its own way and will take time, but- the treatment of the nurses (which I have barely touched in this post, and won’t really get into) and the staff in general, was so very poor. And I realize the hospitals are overrun but I just don’t think that’s any excuse at all.
Anyway. Here’s Applepig and Snowberry. Until next time:
