Home, But Not For Long

Getting Steve home in his parents car was a struggle as the operation he had means he can't lay on his back or sit down for at least 4 weeks. He had to lay on his side across the back seats and was in a lot of pain, especially at every turning or bump in the road. We got him home and immediately he seemed more himself. He was so happy to be back home and felt like he was finally taking a step forward.

(This picture is a little something I got for him for when he came out of hospital - nothing special but said just what I wanted it to say, a reminder that I would be with him through all of this. Inside is a little note from me, saying a similar thing.)

It was a worry that his appetite had disappeared so dramatically. We were warned he would lose his appetite quite a bit, but for someone who loves good food and plenty of it, this was actually quite scary. He didn't want anything, just water. I didn't want to force him to eat anything but at the same time, I wasn't about to let him go a week with no food. I figured out that the best way to encourage him to eat was to say "Well I'm making some for myself anyway, so I'll make some extra and it's there if you fancy it." And usually, once it was in front of him, he did fancy it. Yay!

Steve struggled to stand for more than 5 minutes at a time, but the only rest his legs and hips could get was for him to walk (therefore not really rest them at all). We would put a film on which would end up taking 4 hours to watch because of the amount of times we had to pause it for him to get up and walk around, or switch sides because one had become to painful to stay on. It really was hard to see.

The keyhole surgery meant he had no use of his stomach muscles, which until you can't use, you don't realise how much you actually need them for everything you do! Day to day things became mammoth tasks - if he managed to get up and have a shower each morning, that was an achievement. And even though it doesn't seem like an achievement to the average person, I felt so proud of how far he'd come since that Thursday in hospital.

A week after his op, on Thursday 13th September, Steve said this was the best he'd felt - his urine infection from the catheter was starting to ease as the antibiotics kicked in, and I could see a glimmer of his personality coming back to me. Which is why when he got out of bed and his 'behind wound' gushed blood all over the bed, floor and everywhere else, we panicked. It was not stopping, and it looked like a lot. He kneeled down, leaning over the bed and I put a few towels underneath him while I called the ward, who told me to call a district nurse out.

While we waited for her, Steve got back into bed wrapped in towels and the bleeding seemed to stop. He then got up for a shower and it started again. The bathroom looked like a murder scene, there was blood all over the shower floor and up the walls, it was terrifying.

He managed to get back into bed and when the nurse came out, she thoroughly checked him and said she couldn't understand why this had happened. She called out Steve's GP, who insisted that his wound was really infected. An ambulance took us back to hospital, where a different surgeon examined him and said he was absolutely not infected, and that this was completely normal, and even expected. Could've told us that! I thought I was going to have a heart attack!

I took a few of his good friends to visit on Saturday; it was the first time he'd felt up to seeing anyone else. He had a lovely hour with us and hearing him properly laugh again reminded me that it had been a while since he had. Only about 10 days, but he'd laughed so much up until the day of his operation that everywhere felt cold and empty without that sound.

So now it's Monday 17th September and I'm hoping he'll be coming home today. He's been kept in for 4 nights so far, but the bleeding has pretty much subsided and he's been feeling himself again. I can't wait to have him back home again, this is a big house to be completely alone in.