Thursday, December 30, 2010

My Stay At NYU: The Stroke Unit Day 2

It's hard for me to remember everything that happened as is the case with stroke victims.  Your short term memory sucks which is extremely frustrating at times.  What I remember from day 2 though starts with me being moved from the ICU to a regular room on the floor.  A small victory but man was I going to miss that awesome view and a personal nurse!

I moved just across the hall after being tested for walking ability, speech and strength in my right side.  This was a two person room and I had the bed closer to the door and no view.  Very upsetting haha.  My roommate kept the curtain drawn so I didn't really see her but I knew that she was my age and had MS.  I would have liked to talk to her but she didn't seem to be in the best of moods...wonder why.  My mom kept  a close watch on me, my purse and my shoes.  I say a close watch because she knew I wanted to leave that hospital and because I'm over 18, I could have, no one would have stopped me, I would have been able to just check myself out.

Before she left, she took everything with her so that if I did leave, it would be without shoes and without money.  She left me with chapstick, my phone, a charger and my toothbrush, bare essentials.  Not even something I could trade with my new roomie for cab money!  I was now put on Heparin non stop in a drip.  They said that hopefully my blood would be thin enough for me to be out of there soon. Music to my ears.  They said I could get out of there sooner if I could give myself Lovenox.

Lovenox is a "bridge" to help ease me off the Heparin and into Warfarin, a blood thinner.  Lovenox sounds great but...it would mean I would have to inject myself with it.  Kudos to you diabetics on the real, I don't know how you do it!  This freaked me out so I put it in the back of my mind and decided to just give myself a pep talk the next day since I was already down that I wasn't going home that day.  I kept getting woken up every couple of hours by vampire nurses coming to take my blood and still the curtain separating the beds in the room was drawn so no chance of becoming friends.

More Percoset and off to sleep I went.

2 comments:

  1. Only you could look so good in a hospital gown.

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  2. I remember having bruises all over my arms when I was in hospital after my stroke. They were taking blood 6 times a day, though 2 of those were at the same time, so thankfully it was 'only' every 6 hours. I remember being woken up at midnight, and then again at 6 in the morning, for them to take blood.

    Luckily, I didn't need to self-inject blood thinners, as I had to stay an extra 2 days during the period I would've had to do that, as my blood wasn't yet thin enough to be discharged. Though they injected me in the thigh, rather than the stomach, with Clexane (looking it up, I see that it's the same drug). I wonder why they had to jab you in the stomach?

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