Pain update:
One of the nurses brought me a pillow to put under my knees so that I could take some weight off of my tailbone. It's been a BIG help. Ever since this morning where I was crying in bed because it hurt so much just to sit, pain's been back down to a 2/10 to 3/10 all day, which is right about in the range where you can ignore it and not be too bothered by it. Getting the air-inflated anti-DVT pads off my legs and the IV out of my left hand helped with my freedom of movement a lot too. Those air pads were really annoying, made it really hard to sleep, because it felt like your legs were being smushed every 30 seconds.
Also, the nausea has finally died down, I can drink water without throwing up, and I was actually able to enjoy both breakfast and lunch, (the first day I felt so sick that I could barely get anything down at all, they brought out both soy milk and hot chocolate at all three meals, but I couldn't even drink half if it because my stomach just wasn't up to it. I threw up twice.) But today it's been creamy corn soup of some sort and hot chocolate, and YUM. Nice savory warm soup and drink feels so good.
Also, I did finally get my computer set up, but I'm not sure that I really want to go into elaborate detail on how everything felt yet, I might just wait until I can get back to the hotel and get the packing out, because sitting up to type on the computer still hurts for now, so I can only do it in small doses.
Anyway, as a brief summary, day 0 when I first woke up was barely any pain, but my head was spinning from the residual anesthesia, I couldn't focus my eyes on anything. Day 1 was a hellish day of pain both from the packing as well as from the pressure of the hard hospital bed pressing on my tailbone for 24 hours straight. Plus I was still nauseous, couldn't keep food or water down, threw up a lot, just generally felt miserable. This morning was the absolute worst, mainly because of the tailbone pressure. (People who are heavy like me probably need to be wary of this. I feel like these hospital beds were definitely not designed for those of us with a lot of weight pressing down.) Once that was resolved, though, the day's been much much better. Pain's mostly stopped, no more sharp stabbing pains from nerves coming back online, now that I've got the pillow to support my knees the tailbone pain has stopped, and the nausea is gone.
Now I'm just waiting... slowly feeling better...
