Surgery day! July 14, 2011

The outside of the hospital.  New, beautiful facility.

It is interesting to me how different this surgery was for the last one in April. This time, they couldn't find any veins to get my IV in!! I drank too much water and was too hydrated I guess. Anyhow...the surgery went well. My mother in law took me and she brought her camera, so we had fun with that. The surgery was 16 minutes long and went like a "textbook." I had nausea and some pain when I woke up. They gave me some good stuff though to make me more comfy. The foot is all bandaged up thick, so I haven't seen the incisions yet. The stitches come out in 13 days. When I got home, I took a 2 hour nap and felt ok. Went to bed early. When I woke up this morning, I was in much more pain than I expected. They put an anti-nausea patch behind my ear, so I figured I'd try taking more pain killers to see if it would bring the pain down and it has. They gave me a special shoe to wear on that foot. The discharge instructions said I could weigh bear as tolerated. Can't tolerate it yet! So I'm back to using my walker. It will probably get better in a couple days. Hopefully, even better than before since the irritating screws aren't there anymore! They didn't let me keep the hardware. :(

Anyway, here are a few photos from my adventure.

The hospital even has a piano in the lobby!

The wall of windows in the surgical weighting room area.

The kitchenette where you can get coffee and have computer access.

The view out the windows.  Water does the soul good!

The patient status board.  You wear a barcode on your wrist and they scan you as they move you around updating your name on the board with a different color depending where you are in the process.  Kind of like watching for a flight to come in at an airport.

Another wonderful touch at this hospital.  The johnny!  Believe it or not.

Nice, warm socks that are fun, too!

Me just hanging out waiting for some action.

Me reading discharge instructions.  The white hose coming off the side is blowing hot air into my johnny to keep me warm and comfy.  It even comes with a remote so I can turn it up or down as I like.

Starting to get drugs administered.

DONE!  Fresh out of surgery.  I was eating a cracker, had some vanilla ice cream in my other hand and ginger ale on the table.

After the IV came out, my skin was pretty irritated from the tape.  Not sure what was going on with that, but it is all gone now.

The bandaged foot in the special shoe.

The special shoe.  It has Velcro on the top so it will open right up and you don't need to slide your foot into anything.  Much less pain!  It has a good tread on the bottom of it, too.

The well bandaged foot complete with tootsies sticking out!

This was the arm they tried to get the IV into and something went wrong with the valve.  This bruising is what I found when I took the bandage off.

This is the arm that did get the IV successfully.  Minimal bruising.

After I took the anti-nausea patch off, I stuck it too a piece of paper to view it more closely.  I've never worn a medical patch.  It's amazing that this little thing did such a great job for 3 days.  It felt much bigger than it looks behind my ear.