Five days in hospital, or Bed rest is rubbish

The day after the operation I was woken up and offered cereal and toast for breakfast, along with more pain medication and my regular arthritis medicines. Then I was brought a bowl of water to wash myself with. The nurse helped by washing my back and scrubbing the pink stain from the operation off my legs. After that, my ward-mates and I were moved to the male ward as there were only four of us and the male ward was also half empty due to it being the Easter holidays and Will and Kate's wedding bank holiday meaning more surgeons had taken time off. The male ward had separate bays and so we had a little bay all to ourselves and the bonus was that this ward had televisions so we could watch the wedding from our beds!

The next few days blurred into one, punctuated by medication rounds, mealtimes and best of all visiting times! I was lucky enough to have visitors for every visiting time and it was so nice to see them and chat. After the first night I was in very little pain but I always took the pain medicine when it was offered. Most of the nurses were very nice and kind but it was a shame that the staff seemed to change most days so we weren't able to build up much of a rapport with any of them. I think that this was due to the wards being combined and the staff being combined too (quite a few of the nurses were made to have time off as there were not enough patients to justify two wards worth of patients). I was especially impressed with how the nurses changed my bedsheets while I was still in the bed through me rolling onto one side then the other!

I got very bored of being in bed all the time and was quite jealous when the other ladies (who had had hip and knee replacements) would walk to the shower room each morning and sit up in their chairs to eat. I was most jealous when they had their feet washed by the nurses, as mine did feel quite warm and sweaty at times in their thick bandages. I spent most of my time watching television, reading magazines and working through a book of sudoku puzzles that I had been given. I was quite sleepy as a result of the pain medications and often found myself drifting off in the afternoons!

Each day a doctor came to check up on me and read the results of the frequent blood pressure, heart rate and temperature checks we had. He also would look at my toes and touch them in turn to check that the nerves were functioning. This was quite a strange experience as some of the toes felt very normal (particularly my big toes) but others felt very...different. There was a sensation when he touched them but it was not a normal sensation of someone touching my toe. When I told him that he asked me to close my eyes and say if I could feel him. I told him when I felt something and he seemed happy with this. We continued this way and I felt happier that there was definitely sensation in my toes.

I had been hoping to be discharged on the Tuesday following my Thursday operation and had been told that I would be having an X-ray and visiting the plaster room on Tuesday. I was also told that I would need to be seen by a physiotherapist before I left and I hoped this would happen on Tuesday too. I was looking forward to leaving the ward to get my X-rays and plasters put on but most of all I was looking forward to getting out of bed!