Out of hospital in a record 5 days

After what is my shortest stay ever in Peter Mac I was released from hospital on Tuesday.... 5 days in total. This was due to the fact that the hospital run a great program which is designed to get people out of hospital quicker.

The program starts a day before and day of surgery where I was required to drink some carbohydrate drinks to keep my body healthy and prepared for the recovery. The program then has different goals everyday, an example being:

Day of Surgery

1. Drink 2 carbohydrate drinks before 6am
2. After surgery have a high protein drink / dinner
3. Get out of bed for 1 - 2 hours

Day 1

1. Sit out of bed for 4 hours
2. Walk twice during the day (50m each time)
3. Have a shower
4. Have intravenous fluids stopped

Day 2

1. Remove Catheter...... YAY!!!!!!!!
2. Walk 3 times (50m each time)
3. Keep up fluids

Day 3

1. Walking around freely and going to the bathroom unassisted
2. Eating and drinking normally
3. Stoma functioning as expected
4. Pain in under control

Day 4

1. Prepare to go home

Obviously not everything we did was in that exact order but it was pretty close. The parts that are highlights for me are:

Surgery Day - Get out of bed

After Surgery

So this was my first failure, I sat up out of bed with assistance from my nurse. After sitting on the bed for over a minute and waiting for the light headedness to disperse I stood up to walk to a seat which was 1m away. I got to the seat, sat down and felt incredibly light headed like I was going to faint. After a quick blood pressure test my blood pressure had dropped significantly, the decision was quickly made to get me back into bed. 2 minutes out of bed achieved, 1 - 2 hours out of bed failed

Day 1

On day 1 I managed to get out of bed, have a shower by myself and walk around the ward with the physio. I did spend a lot of time out of bed until the pain started getting worse so I got back into bed. 

My Intravenous drips stayed connected to me on this day mainly because as a preventative because of my past history I was getting quite a number of Anti-Biotics pumped into me.

Andrew and Gemma visited me today which was the day where I was in the most pain so no doubt I wasn't that much fun. 

Day 2

Day 2 started off the best, at 6am my nurse walked in and told me the catheter was coming out. For anyone who has had a catheter it isn't the best experience of it going in or coming out but for 2 days I had this feeling like something was pushing up against my bladder and it was really uncomfortable. I first felt this directly after surgery when I was in the recovery room, I asked the nurse if I had a catheter in and she told me I did. I remember thinking that they hadn't inserted it correctly and had missed my second bladder which was my Japenese bladder.... I don't know if this was because of really good drugs, me thinking about work, or the fact my cancer has a Japenese variant. 

Anyway having the catheter out was going to be a good thing, the nurse did a great job and within 5 - 10 seconds it was removed (I think the quicker they do it the less painful it seems)

On Day 2 I also had all my intravenous fluids stopped and was walking around by myself. Obviously I still had pain from being cut open but it was quite significantly less than the day before. That was probably an advantage for Mel who visited since I was a bit more perky than I was to Andrew and Gemma the day before

I'm a Falls Risk

Day 3

Today was more exercise, ensuring I was eating well, meeting with my wonderful stoma nurses and preparing for discharge the next day. Jamie visited me in hospital today, highlight of the day was seeing Jamie needing help from the nurse to get a gown on. 

Day 4

Home day!!!! Today we just wrapped things up from making sure I could manage the stoma, taking the wound care off the wound and getting my medication from pharmacy. At about 1:30pm my parents came and I was on my way home. 

So now I am home slowly recovering ready for the next surgery which I am told will be in about 3 months (so could be 3 - 6 months)