in the hospital

Inveterate geek that I am, I'm glad that the hospital has free wireless! So, yes, I'm blogging from my room.

I was in the OR for about an hour and a half, which was about half an hour longer than expected, so Karyn was starting to worry. The gallbladder was an 8/10 on the inflamed scale, so it was a bit harder to extract through the scope. Right now I'm fairly well medicated on morphine, and I'm also being oxygenated (as you could see from the picture). I have a funky leg massager thing to help prevent deep vein thrombosis, and I also have a gadget which I have to slowly suck on to raise some blue coloured balls, which is used to help me breathe deeply, and helps prevent pneumonia. I've managed to go for a walk round the nurses' station, which was a lot of effort and exhausting. My surgeon wants me to stay over night so he can check my liver function in the morning. So... I'll have some kind of update tomorrow. I should also have a few more pics, as one visitor had a camera with them, but no cable to upload them to my computer. The earlier pic was taken with the built in webcam, which is too cumbersome to take more than just my happy face.

I'm on a clear liquids diet at the moment, so my dinner was beef broth, iced tea, apple juice, mango smoothie and peach jello. I've also been having a lot of water.
That, with the IV means I've been peeing rather frequently!

As for future diet, I have to be low fat for the next couple of months, but after that, my surgeon said I'd be back to a regular diet, so no long term changes necessary.

I've played a few games of Fluxx, complete with the Party Pack promo cards, with my visitors, which is helping keep my brain active. And of course, I have web access to keep me busy, though the hospital's content filter is blocking livejournal and facebook for "adult content".

If you're in the area, I'm in Missouri Baptist hospital. Visitors are welcome at any time - no official hours, but please call, IM, or email me before hand for more details, especially as I'm not yet sure when I'll be discharged. I'd hate for you to turn up to discover I've gone. If you don't have contact details for me, drop me an email at **mo-bap at timothyorguk** (add dots just like in this blog address, but don't add www), and I'll be able to get that.