Update the third: Good days and Bad days

Well, I've been in the hospital for 26 days now with no definite end in sight.  My left leg is finally starting to heal up, but it's still draining a little bit along one set of stitches.  The official opinion is that once my leg stops draining and has been dry for a couple of days, I might finally get released from the hospital...provided that the necessary provisions for at home health care have been arranged. 

The past two days have been a bit roller-coaster-y unfortunately.  Monday, I had a really good day.  My baby sister, who just happens to be a registered nurse who works oncology, came up to visit me on her day off.  She brought me lunch from outside the hospital and even took me outside so I could get some fresh air and sunshine.  It was probably one of the best days I've had since I was admitted to the hospital after the accident. 

Today, however, has definitely offset yesterday's high-point.  At seven o'clock this morning one of my doctor's came up, along with one of the orthopedic residents, to change the dressing on my left leg.  This is typically a painful and aggravating experience, the doctor's tend to do it as quickly as possible without much regard for how it feels for me.  Today was no different in that regard, they quickly changed the bandages on my leg and re-secured my leg in the locked brace they keep both of my legs in to restrict mobility.  This time, however, the pain was considerably worse than normal.  I currently have 2 pain medications that I have access to per doctor's orders: an injection that I can have once every 3 hours and pills that I can take every 4 hours.  The pills are far more effective for pain relief and last a lot longer, but the injection works faster for when I need more immediate relief.  So I called for an injection of pain-killer after the doctors re-wrapped my leg and then, half an hour or so later, I took a dose of the pain pills as well because it still hurt quite a bit.

The drugs made it possible for me to sleep until around lunchtime at which point I forced myself to wake up and eat.  The pain was steadily getting worse as the pain medications wore off and I tried to figure out why.  Typically, the pain from changing the bandages on my leg fades back to normal within a matter of hours.  So I pulled the blankets off my leg and looked at the brace on my left leg because the leg's position just felt wrong.  I immediately noticed that the brace was on wrong.  Instead of my knee being in the gap between the thigh and calf pads of the brace like it was supposed to be, my knee was wrapped up in the thigh pads and the whole leg was in pain as a result.  One of the physical therapists helped me get the brace back on correctly and we iced the knee down for a few hours.  Thankfully, that got my pain under control and the rest of my day was a big improvement.

On a side note, my stepfather managed to get himself sick and ended up spending a couple of days in the hospital again.  In no small part, this is because he refuses to accept the fact that he needs more rest than he's letting himself have.  So my mom went over his head and talked to his boss, guaranteeing that he is no longer allowed to work more than 4 hours a day.  He's on the mend now and I think he might finally have figured out that the doctors really did have his best interests in mind when they told him to take it easy.  I guess we'll see.