Recovery - Day 2

Friday 17th Feb 2006.

This was the day when I made my first foray from the prone position that i'd be in for the past 36 hours or so.
Actually, having your leg elevated on a pillow (as can be seen in the pictures) can give you really bad cramp in your butt. Mine really ached!

Anyway - I was once again woken up with breakfast (all much too early at about 7:30am). I'm so not used to eating at that time, although if someone brings it to me on a plate (literally) I'm not going to turn it away. This time I got grapefruit, cereal, fried breakkie, tea and orange juice. Ace. An a newspaper which kept me amused in the morning.

The nurses helped me to clean myself, again whilst still imobilised, but I wasn't as out of it as on day 1.

GRIZZLY BIT =>

They then started to remove the various tubes attached to me, starting with the catheter, which I was grateful to see the back of. Having a catheter really takes the piss. The extraction of said tube was an interesting pain experience. It didn't last long to be fair but you feel it all the way out and it is like peeing acid. It's the best description I can think of.
So that was interesting, but a relief to be rid of it.

The nurse then took out the drain in the knee. Now this did hurt. It was a dull kind of pain, but again you can feel it all the way into your knee, and the longer it is there, the more tissue grows around it which has to be ripped off of it. So although it didn't last for long it was a very bizzarre feeling.

GRIZZLY BIT OVER

Not sure if the drips and the morphine (PCA - patient controlled analgesic for the lovers of technical terms) came out then or a bit later. But it was definitely on day 2. These are much longer than you think (about an inch or two). having them removed is good, because applying pressure on the skin then doesn't hurt, but the removal is annoying. The loss of the PCA was also a little sad.....

The nurses then started to remove the compression bandage. This turns out to be a hell of a lot of cotton wool and it was all sticky on the iodine that thay then had to clean off. It must have been busy on the ward because it took a few visits before it was done. The physio had popped in a few times as well to see if I was ready to get out of bed, and every time I was still having the bandage removed!

Once that was all done, my mate Dave De popped in to say hello, which postponed the physio for another 30mins or so.

After Dave had left the physio got me to put my brace on. It was pretty tight over the swelling, but not too uncomfortable. She then showed me the correct way of getting out of bed using crutches and got me standing up. a short trip down the corridor and down and up a small flight of stairs was as much as I managed on recovery day 2. I was also given some exercises involving, moving the feet and sliding the leg to the edge of the bed and back. All designed to get the thigh muscles working and keeping the blood moving through the leg.

After all that effort I decided to settle down and play some Medal of Honour Frontline. Great game, but could have done with a bigger TV to see all the snipers in the backround.

After lunch Lyndsey came in to see me and brough me some sweets and hot air blimp including helium (sourced at great effort) to aid in the recovery process. Many thanks to the Denton Parents for their sweet contributions. They proved very good comfort food. Until day 13 I think these were the only sweets and cards that I got! Still, I've had loads of tea and sympathy so I'm more thna happy. (Although some grapes wouldn't have hurt!)

Jack came in at about 4ish, and beat me on pro evo 5 (4-2), so no change there (but congratulations on passing the driving test - nice one), and then my mum also turned up and had some coffee.

At this time I made my first unassisted trip to the loo (it was ensuite so not far to go). This went fine although I knocked over a bottle and made a bit of noise, requiring me to shout out that I was ok. A comic moment apparently.
The trip really brought it home how useful those handles that they put in the disabled loos next to the toilets actually are when you can't put weight on one leg. Brilliant.

This was also my dad's birthday so I gave him a call.

That was pretty much it for day 2.