Recovery was not fun. I had my surgery on a Tuesday and got out of the hospital on Saturday. That’s always with mixed emotions. On one hand, you are so sick of the hospital you just want out. On the other hand, you know you still need a lot of care so leaving the hospital is worrisome.
Because of problems that I had with the anesthesia, which I’ll write more about later, I also got pneumonia while I was in the hospital. My second night I had a fever so I was up all night getting prepared for a CT scan. (It took two hours to get the IV started to inject the contrast for the CT). It found that I had aspirated into my lungs.
Another day I had such a metallic taste in my mouth that I couldn’t eat or drink anything. They were fearful of me being dehydrated but the water washing over the metallic taste was awful. We couldn’t figure out what was causing it (possibly a drug?) but my friend bought me Lifesavers and that helped a bit.
The food at Stanford was the worst I’ve ever experienced. OK, hospital food isn’t supposed to be good but it wasn’t the food as much as the food service that was completely exasperating. I wonder if the Director of Nutritional Services at Stanford has any pride whatsoever in his/her job? If so, it does not filter down to the employees.
On Thursday morning, the doctor took me off a liquid diet and allowed some soft foods. He saw me at 11 a.m. and when my food—all liquid—came at Noon, I was so disappointed, but understood that the order probably went in too late for lunch. But at 2 p.m. they brought another tray for the soft food diet. I was so excited until I looked at the tray. It was the exact same food – chicken broth, jello, tea and an Italian pudding (which was too sweet for me to eat). I said to the attendant—there is nothing different here. She said—You can now have chicken noodle soup but we were out.
So they brought the exact same tray of food back? Tell me how that makes any sense.
The next morning my breakfast was oatmeal and an English muffin. I took the lid off the plate and the English Muffin was burnt to a crisp. Not a bit dark or brown but BURNT. I don’t know who could have possibly been responsible for putting that on a plate, thinking it was acceptable.