Wendi Lou Lee

I got put in a wheelchair to go to the recovery floor, so excited! It was totally surreal, I couldn’t believe we were leaving that mind-blowing ICU floor. When we got to my room #1261, we were greeted by my RN Chelsea.  A sweet girl but serious about her position, she had a big job to do. She told me we needed to be done with the morphine as soon as possible. Not a good drug to keep going into my body … many like it because it is so quick acting for pain. Straight into the IV and you have pretty much instant relief.  So her first recommendation was to be done with morphine and switch over to Norco. A pain med but much more mild, basically a Codine and Tylenol mix.  I was totally game and just had to wait four hours between doses, instead of the hourly morphine dose… The best part was that when we stop the morphine it also stops so much of the nausea.

By this time Josh and Bren were like zombies, they needed to get out of there … they needed to sleep, eat and just attend to themselves for a bit. As I got comfy in my new room, I gave them the go ahead to just split. I was totally fine, my room was awesome…it was so pretty and QUIET.  I chilled for a bit and then Chelsea told me I’d be going in for the Post-Op MRI. I was starving so I got a vanilla pudding to snack on while Curtis my transport took me over to the Radiology wing for the MRI. I’m thinking this recovery thing is going to be great! Curtis is a short man, blonde and super nice making small talk as we got over there. I was placed on the machine and got all set-up… same as the last two MRI’s I’d already had, I wasn’t even stressed.

The tech says “okay, we have forty minutes of this and then I’ll pull you out, add the contrast dye into your IV … (Suppose to make the pictures more clear)…and then 10 more minutes, you will be all done and free to relax! Are you ready?”  I was like totally!  Well I have to say those 40 minutes were possibly the most awful 40 minutes of my life.  I had experienced the loud jolting noises twice before but never after having your head cut open, skull cut and then your dark brain flooded with Grey’s Anatomy look-alike operating lights. By the time I was being pushed back to my room, I was moaning … My head was just throbbing!  I now know that in the hospital the nurses are always asking you to rate your pain level … at this moment I was definitely a 10!