Post-Surgical Recovery - part 2

I'm pretty sure it was Wednesday, six days after my surgery, that I was truly me again. It's like I'd been completely out then in some kind of limbo, or maybe dreaming, or maybe some alternate reality. But by Wednesday, after the excess fluid was all gone and my improved breathing had re-oxygenated me, I was clearly clearer.

I don't know how much I was up and moving before, but as of Wednesday, I was up walking and made several rounds on the whole 5th floor, two or three circuits at a time, two or three times a day. It was a dog and pony show since I was still wired up to the IV 'cart' which is really just one of those stands on wheels with a control box in the middle and a bunch of bags and tubing hanging off the top that were ultimately threaded to me.

I did the double gown thing for modesty. Had one on properly, which of course could flap open in the back, but then I put another on over it, backwards, to make a sort of jacket or housecoat. It was loverly, I assure you. The good part of my attire though were my slippers. My parents had brought me a pair of beautiful purple (my favorite color) slippers that looked much like ballet slippers but they had a good textured sole on them so they would defy their name and keep me from slipping.

I waved or tossed a greeting or even a joke as I passed the nurses' stations on my walking rounds. There were three stations. Though only the one near my room had charge of me, the staff moved around so I eventually became familiar with, and to, nearly all the staff. They were always friendly and encouraging, noting my improvement and cheering me on. Later, after I'd been discharged, I wrote a letter to the management of the hospital and praised their staff on the 5th floor. I hope the kudos got back to them.

Anyway, by Friday, I was getting antsy to get out of there. I felt great. My turn around seemed sudden but it was quite complete. Even my surgeon was tentatively ready to release me as early as Saturday, if not, then Sunday.

But then, the delay happened. Suddenly late Friday afternoon, I got a fever and chills. I don't mean a mild case of chills. I mean uncontrollable, body-wracking chills. I shivered all over, my teeth were chattering. I couldn't have felt colder if I was outside in Alaska naked. I had my folks help pile on the blankets and it didn't help. I was still freezing.

We called in a nurse and tried to figure out what was going on. My temperature had suddenly jumped from normal to about 104. The weird thing is, I was lucid and all. I mean I thought that if you had a temperature that high your brain would be sizzling or would shutdown.

Naturally I was given something or other to break the fever asap and it worked, so then I sweat buckets and threw off all the blankets.

Tests were ordered and processed. My surgeon and the nurses tried to find out just exactly what was happening. While that was going on, the whole fever/chill scenario repeated a few times. And somewhere in that, I developed sores in my mouth which hurt and made everything taste terrible. When children get it, I think they call it thrush. I didn't care what it was called, but it was a miserable condition.