German hospital time

I found the doctors were a bit shifty about when they would send me home.  I think they were trying to humor me (and my desire to get home to the kids asap) while thinking it was probably better for me to stay longer because going home meant being around a rambunctious toddler and trying to get back to all the responsibilities that mothers hold and what I really needed was rest.  Ultimately I stayed 4 days I went in on Tuesday morning for my surgery and was released Friday afternoon.  

For the first day and a half post surgery I had a nerve block retained in my leg. It was nice because when I had pain I could deliver meds directly to the nerve in my leg. However, that also meant that the leg didn't really move on it's own. I was confined to bed completely the first day. The second I was instructed by my nurse ring for assistance to stand up even with my crutches. After the first few times there was a shift switch and a new person showed up (I think a nursing assistant). He seemed really hesitant to help and asked if I thought I could go alone. I actually thought I could so I said yes. I made it to the bathroom pretty well but on the way back I caught my drainage tubes on the edge of the bed and pulled them out. I sprayed blood everywhere. Honestly, I found it hilarious because the tubes pulled from the container (not from my leg) so it didn't hurt and it made the hospital room look like a murder scene and when I called the guy back in he looked pretty nervous. When he realized it was just the drainage tubes he reattached them and cleaned up. He decided not to let me walk to the bathroom alone again though.

In preparing for my hospital trip I had downloaded a lot of books onto my kindle because there would be no TV and I would be stuck in bed. One of the books that I read while I was there was "The Nightingale" by Kristen Hannah. Without giving anything away, there is a scene in the middle of the book that is absolutely heartbreaking. As I hit that scene I cried, like really sobbing crying. Which ought to have been fine, because I was alone in my room. Except that it happened to coincide with a regular nurse check. When the nurse walked in he was quite concerned. He asked if I needed more pain medication or if he should call the doctor. I explained that I wasn't crying from pain, it was just from a book. He looked at me like I had two heads. I suppose he never read a book that made him cry. Even more funny is that I later recounted the episode to two female nurses and they just nodded knowingly and laughed that the other nurse hadn't understood a good book cry.

The hospital food situation was interesting. I should preface by saying that most Germans have lunch as the large meal and dinner is often smaller, often called only Abendbrot (evening bread) instead of Abendessen (evening eating/meal). Well, honestly we still eat "like Americans" and traditionally dinner is our larger meal. So in this way I struggled a bit. The breakfast was fine, usually bread with some toppings, the lunch was great, a large warm meal that tasted very good. Dinner was only bread with toppings (like breakfast although often even smaller). The biggest problem was that I did not fully understand the ordering system and I was putting check marks where it said "bread, max 2 peices" I thought if I checked there they would give me two pieces but I kept only getting one piece of bread with some cheese spread or butter. I was starving at night. I had to ask the nurse for extra food one night and they scrounged up some crisp bread, which at least allowed me to sleep. It wasn't until my last order form that I realized I had to write the desired NUMBER in the box (ie: 2) to get the max allowed number of items. So while all the food tasted good, and the lunch tasted great, I was a bit hungry. I also honestly missed chocolate. I don't eat a large volume of sweets, but I do usually have a small piece most days. I was so very happy when my friend Ellen visited one day and brought me a piece of chocolate cake. It really satisfied my starving sweet tooth.

I appreciated the long stay. It allowed me to begin physical therapy in the hospital and have pain medication controlled more closely . It also allowed for a lot of rest that frankly would not have happened had I gone home right away to three children including a very rambunctious toddler. I believe the longer hospital stays are at least in part to be able to send patients home without strong pain killers-as opposed to the US where the send you home right away with a big prescription for opioids.

Sadly the friday release was very tough on me because the hospital can legally only write 1 day of prescription pain meds. I wasn't on anything too strong, just on a pain reliever called Berlosin. This is a similar type of medicine to Ibuprophen but stronger. It is no longer available in the US due to an extremely rare possibility of it causing a blood disorder. However, after looking at the side effects of opiates, the chance of this side effect seems much safer.   The idea behind only prescribing a day worth of meds- is that you go to your Hausartzin to follow up and they will control your medicine-but of course doctors offices are closed on the weekend.  And with crutches and a newly operated leg getting across town to go back to the hospital for a refill was very difficult (my husband rented a by the hour car to pick me up when I was released).  Otherwise I had to take a bus.  My doctors office was not far (<.25 miles) but my apartment was 2.5 flights of stairs up (not fun on crutches). And the nearest bus stop was not a helpful one (I had to make 2 changes from there to go to the hospital or one change to go anywhere downtown).  I had adapted so quickly adapted to having to ride bikes every where but having to walk-slowly on crutches was a new level.  I later learned that they have doctors who make house calls who are covered by insurance which I should have used. Because of this I ended up just using less medication until Monday morning and using over the counter Tylenol and Ibuprofen that I had to fill the gaps. It was not very fun and I wish I had known about that House visit doctors. I will say this is one area that I appreciate in the US is that most doctors have some type of after hours call line. You can call and receive help from an on call physician. That does not exist here. There are doctors you can see on weekends, but in my city the weekend doctors are located at the same hospital (across town)as the ER and there is no prescribing over the phone.

So that is most of the saga of my surgery. I had a lot of other experiences with post op recovery as well (physical therapy, outpatient rehab, and currently I am still doing sport rehab).