The Patient Has Arrived

Claudia is in her room now. They tried to settle her in as best they could, but she just wants them to leave her alone. We have decided that it is completely retarded that they wake you up to tell you to go back to sleep, only to wake you up again. She is having a hard time keeping her pulse ox level above 90 right now, so the machine keeps beeping at her waking her up. To add to that, she seems to be having a reaction to the spinal block they've given her, and she can't stop itching- especially her nose. The itching is made worse by the oxygen they have up her nose. It is a vicious circle: itch, yank out the oxygen to scratch, fall asleep, oxygen drops, machine beeps, wakes her up, puts the oxygen back in, itch, and around we go again. I had a similar reaction to the spinal block they gave me when I had Corbin. I keep telling her she needs to give in and get benadryl, but it is awfully difficult to reason with someone who is so drugged. She has all sorts of contraptions and tubes attached to her. There are the basic ones, like the IV, the catheter and the pressure cuff, and the more specific ones like the pumps on her feet, the ice machine circulating cool air on her legs, the wires feeding into her groin that are blocking her nerves, and the machine that is circulating her own blood out of her knees and back into her arm (that is kind of neat). True to form, as soon as she was awake enough to check, she pulled the covers back to check out the damage. She was disappointed to find her knees were too bandaged to see anything. She spoke to my kids for about 20 seconds- just long enough for them to know that she is okay then closed her eyes and drifted off. She can point and flex her feet, which I thought was almost as exciting as seeing a pig fly. Her toes keep changing colors- purple to pink. I guess she was right about not painting them before surgery. You know what they say... Mother knows best. For now I am going to let her rest and sneak off to the cafeteria. It has been a long time since 4:30 this morning.