The normal routine after a surgery like mine is to give the patient a rest, wake him with drugs, remove the respirator, and put him on a CPAP mask. You have to breathe on the CPAP mask for 24 hours before they remove it. So the normal patient takes the surgery time plus 24 hours to get on his own. This process took 5 days for me.

My routine was more like this... drugs to wake up, take out the respirator, apply CPAP, start freaking out, blood pressure goes crazy, drugs for blood pressure, quit breathing, more drugs to knock you out, back on respirator. This went on for four days after the surgery. I almost made the 24 hours once. They tried different concoctions of drugs to try and help the transition. Barb said at one time they had 15 IV bags hanging off me. The only time they feared losing me was in one of the blood pressure/freaking out times my diastolic pressure was reading about 300 and the systolic number wouldn't show on their machine. They freaked out and Barb said when the doctor ran in his mouth dropped and his eyes bugged out and he started yelling to inject this and inject that and finally got me down again. She said she could tell he was scared and so was she. I would have liked to see that. Finally, they gave up and I went back into surgery to get a tracheotomy which would allow them to put me on and off the respirator easier but after it was installed I didn't have any other problems. I think I fought the CPAP cause it has a positive pressure you have to breathe against and it's like someone squeezing your chest while you're trying to breathe and I've always had a phobia about being smothered or drowned. I think that's why I fought it so hard.

Because you can't talk during this whole procedure they have you write notes. Of course, in the up/down drugged state you're in the notes sometimes don't make sense plus you can't see the notepad so it's like writing blind. Some did, like "Wet my lips with h2o" or "Where's Barb at?" Then there's "I keep jumping dimensions". They must have asked me what I wrote cause I repeated it bigger "Jumping Dimensions". They kept all the notes for us but some still don't make sense.

They give you drugs to erase your short term memory and they work good cause I have very few memories of the 5 days. Only two visual memories, even though the whole family and some friends were there and in and out, I only remember seeing Barb once holding my hand and crying and I remember seeing Jaryd twice. He couldn't come into my glass house in ICU but they'd bring him to the glass and he'd say "Wuv you poppa" looking scared and slightly overwhelmed by it all. I can remember some pieces of the writing episodes but not much and don't remember any other people whether family, doctors, or nurses those first 5 days.

The times I was awake the treatment and care I received was super! Everyone from the doctors, the nurses, all the way up to the janitorial staff were very professional but also very compassionate and caring. I felt as if I was among friends. Also, since I sleep very little normally and almost never during the hospital stay, the doctors, nurses and janitors were all stopping by my room at all hours of the night to catch up on the Olympics.

 Dimensions