Totally Hip Cat Blog

Hello, everybody. In the last post, I had sprained my ankle and it ballooned up into a freakin’ blimp foot. The good news is that it’s all healed up now (good thing, as I’ve been doing a fair bit of walking the last few days). The next step in my saga has been completed. Let me tell you about it.

I arrived in Vancouver (yet again) on the 26th of January for my pre-admission appointment (what the fuck is that? To be admitted before you’re admitted?). This consisted of a bunch of questions and a package of reading material about preparing for the surgery. I was told that I couldn’t eat anything after midnight on Sunday night. Also, that I can drink “clear” fluids up until about 5 hours before surgery (easy enough). After all of the paperwork was done, I was given several requisitions for tests to be done in the medical centre across the street.

I went to the lab across the street and gave them some blood. Well, maybe more than just some. They took about 5 or 6 full vials (holy shit, how many tests do you need to run?). After that, I went upstairs and was put through a ECG to check my heart. After all of these tests, I was sent to get a prescription for Fragmin, an injectable blood thinner (because I had to stop the Warfarin just before I came down here). On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I had to give myself injections of this stuff into my abdomen.

So, basically, from after my pre-admission (there’s that stupid word again), until Sunday night I was free. Luckily, I have a friend or two in town so I wasn’t too bored. I walked a fair bit and killed some time by visiting people and my usual entertainment of TV and Facebook on my iPad (that device is awesome when you’re traveling). Sunday night was the next phase of my preparation.

I had to get a package of antiseptic body wipes because of a new policy at VGH. To kill body germs and help prevent post-op infection, I had to wipe my whole body down with these disposable rags with Chlorhexidine Gluconate (whatever the hell that is). This procedure was also repeated the next day in Pre-op (that’s Monday, for those of you who have dozed off). Also, every 48 hours, they sterilize your nose by putting blue dye up your nostrils (so that it looks like you’ve been using smurf jizz as nasal spray), and then blasting it with laser light to kill the germs (which have conveniently attached themselves to the dye).

A couple of hours after I showed up for pre-op, I was sent in for surgery. Upon waking up (quite suddenly) I was slightly disoriented. Luckily, this didn’t last too long and the staff was on the ball. Then, it was relax time. Or at least, ATTEMPTED relax time. It’s hard to relax knowing that you have one less rib and a hole in your armpit. That’s right, armpit. The entire operation was performed through there. It was quite uncomfortable having tubes coming out through your armpit, let me tell you.

I had one tube going in (called a Picra), that was actually quite small and delivered a numbing agent to the area. Then there was a larger tube to drain the wound into a spring loaded suction container. On top of that, I had another, larger chest tube to drain from around the lung (apparently, I was one of the lucky 10% who gets a nick in the outer wall of the lung during this procedure). All in all, it went well.

Here’s a couple of pictures of it. The first is where the tubes came out of the dressing to their various devices. The second is of the tubes and drainage reservoir.

The smallest tube is the Picra (which gets smaller again where it enters the body), the larger bloody one, is the drainage and the huge one is the chest tube.here’s a picture of the incision, drain, and chest tube without dressings.

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I was given Tylenol and Oxycodone for pain. The numbing agent dosage in the Picra tube, was slowly dropped over a couple of days until it was shut off on the Wednesday. Later that day, it was also removed. Now I had the freedom to clip the drain reservoir to my hospital gown and pick up the chest tube reservoir (which happens to be a big plastic box with readings to tell you how much blood and stuff was collected) and go for a walk (It was soo nice to go to the washroom to urinate instead of using a handheld plastic urinal). Now there was only a drain and chest tube to go.

On the Thursday, the chest tube and the drain was removed. I was now totally untethered (except for the bedside O2 and pulse monitor, which is simple to detach and re-attach). Now it was just pain management and healing to worry about.

Friday was the day they let me go home. I hopped on the plane and headed back to freedom for another month and a half. Around mid-March or so, I have to go back to get another scan on my veins and break up any remaining blood clots. Then the saga will finally come to an end. Until then, remember that your attitude, most of the time, will determine your outcome (more often than not)

This is Totally Hip Cat, signing off for now.