I arrived full of energy and anticipation. the people were delightful and the prep-op went well. I dont remember them giving me anything to go to sleep, all of the sudden i was in my room and lots of questions: are you in pain, are you nauseated? over and over. I had pain but little nausea.

I did not want to open my eyes for a long time, not sure why. when the anesthesia wore off more, the pain increased significantly and they gave me morphine which did not help all that much but muddled my already aging brain. I found it impossible to send a short text message to my wife.

Finally they changed the medicine to dilaudid and wow; i was alive again. still in pain, a bit muddled but i could focus on my situation. I did have a drain in, which did not hurt but the ball creating suction kept gettting in my way. No matter how i asked for them to pin it in front so i would not lay on it they would pin it at my side. I guess they did not realize that the sight of blood, mine or others does not affect me anymore.

that night was the worst. Sleep was not hard to come by but staying asleep is nearly impossible with all the demands the hospital has to check vitals, sugars, pain management. it seemed that I was beign woken up every few minutes.

I held on thinking that i just had to get to the second day and all would be well...