ITU

The first day after my ventilator had been removed was extremely bad. Despite being full of drugs, everything hurts. Now what no-one ever told me was that there is a positive and negative side to pain relief medication. The positive...well that’s obvious! Less pain, hurrah! The negative? Nausea. When you take anything stronger than Ibuprofen your head just starts to spin and everything makes you sick. In ITU I was given a nurse whose job it was just to look after me and no-one else. The first thing she tried to do was to get me to sit up. It took such a long time because it feels the weight of the world is pressing down against your shoulders to keep you in bed. Eventually with some help I managed to move into a chair. Bad move because that was where the nausea kicked in.

I started to throw up on the nurse and a physiotherapist who was younger than me (keep in mind I’m 22!). What makes it worse is that when you feel nauseas, everything makes you sick. Even the bowl they gave me to throw up in smelt bad and made me throw up more. This was the point I hit the floor and started to cry. Something I didn’t think I would actually do, but I was naive to think I could go through such a major surgery without getting upset. I told the nurse I wanted to go home and she did her best to comfort me. Luckily my family weren’t around to see that. Eventually I managed to apologise to the nurse and physiotherapist for throwing up on them and they helped me back in bed.

Later that day people came to visit and I think it was good for them to see me able to speak. My recovery seemed to be going well because at the end of the day they moved me to the High Dependency Unit, which is a step down from ITU. Basically there is one nurse per every two patients. Things seemed to float along here and I don’t remember too much about this. I was then moved to the second floor later that night, and told that the higher up the building you go, the more progress you’re making!

The operation will take a lot out of you and you really lose your appetite. I struggled to eat anything. I think I managed one bite of a sandwich before throwing up. The problem is that you’re weak, but you don’t want to eat which will make you even weaker. Eventually in the middle of the night they moved me to floor 3, the ward I initially came to the night before my surgery...