Day Nine - Wednesday

Overnight the epidural tube had been playing up from about 4am, so once again not a lot of sleep, until it got sorted about 6.30am.  After various discussions within the LT gang and the Anaesthetic gang, they decided the epidural could be removed and I could be switched over to oral pain meds.  From about a week, the LT gang get worried about possible infection from the epidural. But the anaesthetic gang were so happy that the site was still so clean and happy looking. 

While I was waiting for the epidural to be fixed, after about an hour, I could already feel it wearing off, and started to feel a lot of pain.  But it didn't take long to kick in again, once they worked out the problem.

Dianne had her last visit with me today.  She flies back to Canada tomorrow to join her husband on her interrupted holiday!! She will return later to help mum look after me. That will be wonderful!!

I get the ok for the drainage tubes to come out! Yay!! It doesn't hurt, but it's disconcerting seeing these long tubes come out! I have four holes now that up until this point are healing nicely.

My sister Di and Aunty Meg are present for this. Ahh what a lovely feeling getting those out!!  We have a lovely catch up. I haven't seen my aunty for a long time.

I get the epidural out, and swap over to oral meds. There is only one hour in the evening I start feeling really uncomfortable but after a "top up" I feel pretty much the same as I did when on the epidural.

It is lovely to no longer have to do ICE checks and no longer do cough and huff checks for the drains!!

I'm still having intravenous antibiotics as a precaution.

I do some more walking around the ward.  Ahh much easier without the "friends"! Just the catheter "friend" which gets pulled out at midnight. This is because if anything happens, which is usually 12 hours later from when it is taken out, there will be more people around during the day to deal with it, than there would be at night.

I'm starting to get on top of all my forums and facebook and email!!  I have had such wonderful encouragement and support from everywhere.