After learning about the complication with my leg, we were told that we would not be able to leave the hospital on Thursday as planned, and that I would need to stay until Saturday. Bad news, two more days of very interesting Turkish hospital food.
On Thursday morning, Prof. Erdogru came by to see us, he removed my drain line, and examined my incisions. He told the nurses they could remove my IV lines, and gave me the okay for a shower.
It was so nice to get up without dragging a bunch of lines and bags around, yay, I was free.
Walking around was still a little difficult, even with the boot, my leg felt very unstable. When I would get up, I felt dizzy and weak, and I relied on my husbands support in getting around. A shower sounded nice, but I hadn't really put a lot of thought into it. The only way I could stand on two legs was with my boot, and the support of my husband. I knew my boot could not get wet, and I'm pretty sure my husband didn't want to get wet either. So I looked in the shower to see if there was a bench to sit on, nope, one more thing we get to go ask for at the nurses station. How do you say "shower bench" in Turkish? Luckily, somehow between saying shower and then sit, while pointing to my leg, they got it. One of the nurses stepped into a room and came out with a plastic bench. Nice, we got exactly what we needed again without too much confusion. Whew! Shower problem solved!
Later in the afternoon, Prof. Erdogru stopped by to check in on me again. He brought by a stack of DVD's of my surgery, and said he would come back a little later to go over the surgery with us. He came back just as it was getting dark, and spent about an hour going over my surgery. He would get very excited when he could point out a stage in the surgery where he was able to fix an issue with my nerve. He truly is passionate about the work he does, and for this I am thankful.
On Friday morning when I woke up, I noticed I didn't have any more "pins and needles" sensations running through my left leg and foot, and after poking around on it, everything felt normal. I was so happy, one leg down and one more to go. This helped me to get up a little better and walk around without much help. I also noticed that I didn't feel dizzy or lightheaded anymore, this was nice. I started to get around much better and little faster all by myself.
Our days at the hospital were pretty much the same, at night we would talk to our kids and family on Google Voice. We would go on walks late in the night, around 1:00- 4:00 in the morning, (we were still on Utah time) and fall asleep between 5:00-7:00 in the morning, Kris always before me. It seemed just as the sun was coming up I would start to feel sleepy. Most of the nights it was just us in the hallways, but sometimes there would be a very friendly Turkish man walking around as well. I'm not sure what his excuse was for being up so late in the night, but we always smiled at each other and a couple of times tried to talk with each other. The most that came of our conversations was that he learned we were from the United States, and he was from Turkey. One day he said "good morning" and we said "merhaba." which means hello in Turkish. This made him smile so big, and he said something else that we could not understand. I wish we could've chatted, he seemed to be a very interesting person, with some great stories to share. Once we'd get to sleep, the interruption's would begin. They would bring the breakfast tray in early, me and Kris would listen to them come in and set it down, neither one of us would get up. About a hour later they would come back in to get our untouched trays. The only thing we would get up for was to talk to Prof. Erdogru, after he left we would sleep until lunch. We would pick at our lunch, and we would get a visit from the physical therapist for electro shock therapy. Then we would use the rest of the afternoon checking in on Facebook and updating my blog. Kris would always make a run to the Palladium Shopping Center for dinner, and we would count down the hours before we could call home again to check in with our kids and family. 1:00- 2:00 am Turkish time was 4:00- 5:00 pm Utah time. Our days in the hospital, not too exciting, I know.
The hospital staff was very friendly and extremely patient with us, overall our experience was very good. We learned that the night time nurses worked a 14 hour shift, and the daytime nurses worked for 10 hours. Our first night before surgery a nurse came in to help us with all of the preparations. Her name was Duygu, her name means "feeling" or "emotion". She could speak English pretty well, which was very helpful during our hospital stay. We were always excited to see her during our stay, she was very kind, and we were always able to communicate with her. Thanks for being an amazing nurse Duygu!
Finally, Saturday came, we really hadn't seen much improvement with my leg over the last couple of days, and I was worried that I may have to stay longer in the hospital. What a relief when they gave me the okay to finally be discharged. Prof. Erdogru wrote out a couple of prescriptions, and asked us to come by his office on Monday for a post-op examination. While we were waiting to get discharged, Kris wanted to go and get my prescriptions filled before we took off for our hotel. The pharmacy is just outside the hospital on the main road, next to the yummy fruit stand. He asked if I would like to come along, I didn't have to think twice about his offer, I was ready for a change, and outside sounded nice. I thought I was doing so well getting around in the hospital, and than we got out into the real world. I felt a little disappointed, because as we walked down the road to the pharmacy, it was clear I was moving very slowly as everybody hurried past us. It was a quick reality check that I had a lot more improving do.
Once getting back to the hospital, someone from the International Marketing Department came in to help us with our bags, it seems they are always followed by their driver, they were there to help us get to our hotel. They insisted that I leave in a wheelchair, I truly am much better off walking than sitting in a wheelchair, but nobody really gets it, and I didn't have the energy to explain my situation. So, for the sake of wasting no more time of getting out of the hospital, I do as they ask, and we finally leave our hospital days behind us.
No comments:
Post a Comment