UHHHHHH!!!!!! The day after my surgery

Friday, September 21, 2012

I did get a decent night's sleep after that second dose of medicine last night, but my hand was already hurting when I woke up.  My mom made me breakfast and I took 2 more hydrocodone.  I mostly lay on my parent's bed and watched television today. My mom brought my food up on trays.  I was slowly getting the felling back in my hand and arm and could even move and wiggle my fingers.  The doctor had said that would be a while, so I was excited.  He had said it would be several days.  I could also open and close my fingers like the windshield wipers.  Dr. Perlik  told my mom that could take a good while and could be very difficult to do.  I was happy.  My mom changed the drain test tube and friends came over most of the day just to hang out. Doug brought me a milkshake. It was nice!  Throughout the day I really had no pain unless I tried to crunch my fingers into a fist.  That hurt!  Later after dinner, Luke Miller was over and my mom wanted to check my drain.  The tube was not half full yet, but she decided to go ahead and change it.  BIG mistake.  When she took the test tube with blood in it off, I felt nothing, but as soon as she tried to put the next one on, I felt excruciating pain at my incision.  She thought that maybe she had a bad tube or something was wrong with it so she decided to take it off and try another one.  ANOTHER bad idea!!!!  I had made such progress during the day and was feeling no pain and now this.  My mom called OrthoCarolina and found out they have an Urgent Care at the Matthew location.  My dad sped over there (they closed at 9:30).  I was furious.  This really hurt.  When we got there the PA we saw took the dressing off and looked at the incision site and the drain.

How my hand looked at Urgent Care when PA took dressing off.

 

The PA said it looked fine and was draining correctly.  Maybe there was not much more to drain and when my mom changed the test tube it was like holding a straw and putting your finger on the end.  The suction probably was pressing on nerves in my hand that were just coming back to life.  It still hurt like crazy, but obviously there was nothing wrong, so they put the soft dressing back on my hand.  It hurt for the rest of the night until I went to bed, pain medicine and all!