Well, folks, just one day after my combined tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy, I’m back at home.  I’m feeling a lot better than I thought I would although the swelling is currently quite painful as the healing process goes on.  Overall, I’m actually feeling quite well and will be around here on the blog far more than I thought I would be able to.  I can’t work for about two weeks because I still can’t talk much and my job involves a lot of talking, heavy lifting and running around but if I had a desk job somewhere I could probably be back to work after a week.

So Monday started off at 7:00am for me because I had to drive to the hospital an hour away for the surgery.  Once there I registered and proceeded to wait past my appointment time of 8:30 until almost 10:00am, when they finally decided to drug me and get an IV in me.  After that, my surgery started at 11:00am and went off without a hitch.  I didn’t wake up until around 1:00pm but my mum was waiting for me when I came out of anaesthetic.

I didn’t have any of the expected nausea once I came to so I was absolutely starved because I hadn’t been allowed to eat or drink anything since midnight the previous night.  Unfortunately, the hospital kitchen staff did not seem to understand just how long my fast had been because they brought me a tray with only jello, apple juice and a popsicle.  Protein, people!  You need protein to function like a normal human being after not eating that long!  So my mum, noticing how sweaty and pale I was told the staff just to go get her some chicken broth, which I gulped down like a madwoman.  It was a lot better than fainting, but not that much better.

After I was able to go to the bathroom by myself by unplugging my IV machine and taking it with me, mum went home to get some sleep in the evening.  Since adult tonsillectomies have such a high risk of bleeding compared to the tonsillectomies done on children, I had to spend the night in the hospital.  No big deal, right?

Hospitals in the area are overcrowded in part because there just isn’t enough room anymore for the population we have now.  And it doesn’t help that a lot of people up north were evacuated down here because of the fires.  So people end up sharing rooms.  That was fine by me; I was sharing mine with some sweet little old lady and there was a curtain barrier between us anyway.  How bad could it be?

The utter insanity of the day started just before my mum left for home, around 6:00pm.  My sweet little old lady roommate came over to my curtained section, looked confused and said, “Oops!  Sorry! I forgot you were here.”

She went back to her section without incident so I just brushed it off as forgetfulness and let it be.  I didn’t totally believe it because I had been talking with my mum at this point, before the swelling prevented me from doing so, but I just let it go.  No point in making a fuss about it.

Later that night, after mum left I was settling down for some serious sleeping at around 8:00pm.  The lady next to me, who I’ll call Mary, was talking to someone.  I didn’t think much of it until I realized who she was talking to: herself.

“Come on!  You don’t need no stinkin’ oxygen mask.”

“Why they put you in hospital again?  You breathe just fine.”

“Go home!  You’re fine.”

I absolutely knew she was talking to herself because about 15 minutes into the self-trashtalking I came over to see if everything was all right.  Apparently it was because she just harrumphed at me and turned over in her bed.  So I just went to the bathroom again and went back to bed.  From then on I woke up about every hour and almost every time I woke up I heard her scolding the doctors for keeping her in hospital and telling them her family would be there to pick her up soon.  The doctors of course said she wasn’t going home anytime soon because she needed her oxygen mask; her breathing sounded as bad as mine during a severe asthma attack.

Then at 1:00am the real craziness started.  I woke up but didn’t open my eyes because I was so weary but I could hear Mary muttering to herself in a mixture of English and some other language I couldn’t recognize, presumably trash-talking herself again. I rolled over in bed and finally did open my eyes to find her snooping in the cabinet where I kept my clothes and purse.

“What are you doing here?!”

“I’m just looking for a diaper.”

“They’re not here.”

“Well, they were.”

“Get the hell out of here!”  (Not my proudest moment.)

I don’t know if this sweet-but-slightly-crazy little old lady was trying to rob me or was just honestly looking for adult diapers, but after this I was suddenly understandably a little paranoid.  In hindsight it was probably a good idea for my mum to take my cash and credit cards “just in case”.

For the rest of the night I woke up around every hour to either use the bathroom or take a drink to soothe my throat.  The nurses came and checked on me periodically to make sure I wasn’t drowning in my own blood or something equally disgusting.  (Mary, for her part, mostly pretended to be asleep after her little searching for diapers incident.)  By morning I was absolutely ready to climb the walls; I just really wanted to get home and away from my crazy roommate, who continued to talk to herself almost all night.  I say almost because she of course had to pause every once in a while to fall asleep and snore as loudly as a drunken sailor.

Despite the extra pain and swelling on the second day, let me tell you I was so glad to see my mum come into my room to take me home.  It’s really, really good to be home where I don’t have to share a room with someone who talks to herself and possibly tries to steal from me.

How has your week been?  I’m so swollen I can’t talk right now but other than that the pain is actually a lot less than I expected.