SURGERY - PART 2

I awoke in the high dependency ward as expected. Can't really remember too much about that first week due to the morphine given through the epidural. Initially there wasn't much pain, but was increasing by the hour. The anaesthetist arrived to adjust the level of drugs given through the epidural which reduced the pain. Much more comfortable now. I was given small amount of soft food straight away and i tolerated it well.

Two days later they replaced the epidural with morphine. A small amount is constantly going into your blood stream. But you're also given a button which gives a little boost of morphine in times of pain.

Unfortunately, it's computer controlled (a PCA - patient controlled analgesia) with a timer and everything which only lets you administer the boost after a certain period which the anaesthetist sets. Mine was set at about every 8 mins. Bastard thing. I tried to hack it.

The morphine was soon replaced by oxycodone as it seemed to work better on me than morphine for some reason. For the next week i was hiiiiiigghhhhhh as a kite. It felt great. But it does give very vivid dreams. Sometimes bad dreams. And what you don't want are vivid bad dreams.

During the night, i would drift in and out of sleep. My mind would take what the eyes last saw before they closed, and continue it with its own messed up version. When i woke, the dream would somehow morph into what my opened eyes now see. It was almost seamless. Trippy!

At this point, the Dr's were saying i should be discharged in a few days as i was recovering as expected.

But, probably the third day now, i started to bloat very easily. It got worse as i started to vomit green puke (green due to the bile, which indicates vomit coming from an area past the stomach) and severely bloated, so they stopped me from eating which ended up being 2 weeks of no food and a drop of weight to 6st 7lbs! That's 43kg for you imperialists.

A few times I actually puked close to a litre of vomit in one go! They ended up placing an NG tube up my nose and down into my stomach so that if i were to feel blaoted and nauseus, i could suck the vomit out through the tube before actually puking to reduce the stress of it all.

I'm guessing you're dying to see photos. So here they are. First pic is me with the NG tube up my nose which goes right down to the bottom of my stomach. It can suck up any liquidy stuff in there. See the green vomit in the 2nd pic? Good. Remember that image next time you have a meal. Next time you have anything green :)



I remember when the two nurses came in to insert it. They warned me its a very uncomfortable one minute or so. And at the time i was nauseous. Can you guess what happened?

I heaved several times, followed by a projectile vomit! Mostly on the bed, but some on the nurses! 100 POINTS TO ME!

Part 3