Hospital Trivia

Here is some trivia from my hospital stay after open-heart surgery:

I was on IV fluids for the entire six days. Among other drugs (IV and pills) I was given saline, sodium, potassium, an antibiotic, several liquids to help my heart heal, a pill to control acid in my stomach (apparently because I didn’t eat much for the first three days post surgery), a liquid to make it easier to have a bowel movement (it tasted like maple syrup but didn’t work much), a diuretic, insulin injections to control my glucose (again, because I wasn’t eating much), the occasional pain medication (I basically kept telling them I didn’t want pain meds), a beta blocker (for my heart) and an anticoagulation drug (to prevent strokes).

Going to the bathroom while lugging around an IV stand is annoying, at best; but peeing in bed in a “male urine container” is worse.

I was glad there was a recliner in my ICU room as I spent most of my time switching between the bed and the recliner then the bed then the recliner. I just couldn’t get comfortable.

If I slept a solid hour, I considered it a big achievement.

They told me I couldn’t go home until I had a bowel movement. That’s some kind of blackmail, isn’t it?

ICU has a lot of machines that beep -- all the time, day and night.

Watching television was exhausting.

My first shower in ICU (about three days after surgery) was the most exhausting thing I’d ever done in my life.

Despite having a clock and a window, I could almost never tell whether it was day or night.

It appears I have hard-to-find veins. On a couple occasions they had to bring in an ultrasound machine to find them.

At one point, I had six IV lines in my body.

I received a blood transfusion during surgery. I’ve never had a blood transfusion before.

As wonderful as I was treated there, I don’t want to go back into a hospital ever again.