Ok, so technically i'm writing this on Wednesday, but I'm gonna do my best to write this blog as if it was Tuesday evening and was getting my thoughts together (may seem not that complicated to everyone else reading but it has to do with what perspective and word tense i write in, so if i jump from present tense to past tense, please bear with me!)
So sleeping last night (Monday night into Tuesday morning) was different and yet the same as sleeping at the hospital. The obvious major difference being the location, but the other difference is the bed. Yes, i do miss sleeping in my water bed a whole lot, but for the time being Dad's bed is the better option for me, and it's a mattress, and it's this that is somewhat similar to the hospital beds. Now, to help everyone understand, the beds at the hospital are inflatable and always changing. You so much as bend a knee or twitch a foot and the mattress is shifting/inflating/flating to counter your every contour. At some times it's nice, but for me i couldn't help but be at constant war against the bed (i Raged Against the Machine, which is what jumped in my head after my first sleep on the mattress, and the words i believe are the name of a rock band...) The bed does make noise as the air adjusts, but it's something you get used to ignoring easily (considering all the other noises outside the door to my room, yeah, it was real easy to ignore the eeeerrrrinnnng sound of air being blown in and out or wherever)
But i say i battled the hospital bed because it never seemed to give me the right support i wanted when i shifted. It would sink to far down or just not adjust right. Sometimes it helped when i changed the angle of the bed (obviously, this being a special hospital bed, is like one of those theraputic mattresses that can lift the knees or sit uprightish, etc) so i could hit the buttons and lay more at an incline (and later after i asked if the knee part could bend, a nurse unlocked the knee feature. It was locked originally due to so many people on the 8th floor having joint replacements and whatnot were not in need of having their legs bent or raised)
Especially after surgery did i have serious issues with the bed, mostly in the support of how i was lying. During the day i sat in a recliner chair in which i was given a 'waffle cushion' (which i ended up...accidentally bringing home with...ok ok i took it without asking if i was allowed to or not, so maybe i stole it, but i figure they gave it for me to use (and actually, an RN by the name of Amy( this one was a older lady who wore glasses and also brought me to my room my first night in the hospital) was also my RN the evening before i went home and she made a comment, when she was helping rearrange some cushions on the recliner for me, that i should just take it with me (understand the conversation we were having at the time was how much I appreciated the cushion because it wasn't giving me any tailbone pain or lowerback strain despite from sitting in a recliner for a good 80% of the day) ) so I guess you could say i took Amy's advice to heart and took it with me. Mom snuck it out with her when she was taking my walker to the car when i went home. (On a side note, thanks again Aunt Margy for the green throw blanket! Not only has it been great for cover and as a cushion for my head, but Mom was able to hide the waffle cushion within it too)
So, i think i may have loss my original train of thought (guess you could say it 'derailed') so let me try to get back on the straight. I was discussing the bed battling me, oh yeah, how it was harder after surgery with the bed. Although after surgery i gained like five extra pillows from nowhere (they just seemed to be everywhere all of a sudden and i originally only had two) but i had at least one behind my back horizontal for support the lower half, then had one pillow by my left shoulder, a seconed pillow put at an angle so it was behind my head and right shoulder (because even now my shoulder feels like a block of lead, but after surgery it had this particularly weird numb feeling and I had a hard time trying to adjust pillows, attempting to get the feeling that my shoulder was actually being supported instead of floating) and then i had a pillow under each arm so i was pretty much surrounded. All the pillows were of the feathery quality so that they could be beaten and shoved into certain positions for maximum comfort.
Even so, one of the worst sensations i troubled with that week after surgery, whenever i slept in the bed that is, is that my back would feel 'highly strung?' To try and explain, what would happen is that however it was the bed shifted around me, and despite having a pillow in my lower back for support, i'd wake up feeling as if my lower-to-mid back was floating, or just so tense that i could swear it was 'thrumming' with tension. I would do my best to shift, or increase the angle i was lying at (after surgery Dr. Schnittker said i couldn't lay flatter than a 30* degree angle to keep a certain support for my head and neck i suppose) but if somehow i was able to relieve some of the tension and get at least the feeling of support for my lower back, suddenly it was my neck that was in agony and felt unsupported and that sensation would telegraph to my right shoulder which would require more shifting and in the end just a lot of discomfort and a highly strung back (i suppose you could strum a tune across the muscles of my back like a guitar they felt so tight)
But now, at home, i find myself fighting that same feeling again. I have like five or six pillows, varying sizes and even my body pillow and yet last night (Monday night that would be) i woke up around 4:30 am with the feeling that my back was thrumming with tension. It literally feels like a tiny vibration (which i why i feel the word 'thrumming' is by far the most accurate adjective) and of course all i really wanted to do was try and adjust myself in a small increment, because to move my back would mean to move my neck and the cycle of discomfort would continue, but it also can't be relieved until i move, so in the end my only option is to move!
In the end, i usually end up waking up in the near exact position i fell asleep in, and again, that means something is aching one way or another, with or without the pain meds. But the biggest difference waking up this time is that i was in my Dad's room, i was woken up by the sounds of little children arguing over video games (or something along those lines) and no one was popping in to take my vitals. (temperature, blood pressure, blood oxygen (when they put that little clip on your finger and its surrounded by some red light sensor that reads the refection of the hemoglobin, or something like that))
Of course, waking up at home has some other awesome perks to it too. Such as just knowing you're home is a great feeling. I laid in bed for who knows how long just greatful to be home. That i couldn't help but just shove my nose into the sheets and breathe in that smell that i know to be 'Dad' (and i know everyone knows what i mean, but just in case others are unclear, i'm talking about that scent that everyone has that distinguishes them; a better example would be to say when you're sorting laundry and you pick up a shirt and are hit with that moment of question as to who it is so you hold it against your nose and breathe in the smell and are able to tell who the owner is just from that sniff)
So i was comforted just to be able to smell 'Dad' as opposed to 'hospital' and that is an amazingly comforting feeling to get hit with. (on another side not, i did the same thing with Mom's pillow later just because it's such an amazing and soothing thing to breathe in those familiar scents)
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