April 11, 2008 - Part 1 ended with the recovery room nurse giving me morphine… my husband and children said they came to see me… All I remember is waking up around 3 in the morning (when the morphine wore off), and having the worst case of restless leg syndrome pain ever. My legs were still dystonic (painful muscle cramps and spasms) from 11 hours in the OR without my Parkinson's meds. I don't think that the nursing staff understood how painful these cramps can be, or that the only cure is to get up and walk it off. (My neighbours back home know that I can be seen out walking at odd hours of the night.)
I insisted on getting up, and the nurse kept insisting that I was not capable of getting up. It took all the strength I had left to yank off those tight stockings they put on to prevent blood clotting in the legs, and untangling myself from as many of the tubes as I could, wiggling out of bed (with all the rails up to prevent me from doing just that), but I eventually made it up to a standing position. I made it to the bathroom and back, then I fell back into bed with the cramps calmed down at last, and finally fell back asleep - only to be reawakened at 6:00 for the usual vital signs check.
Next episode: home for a week, then back for part 2 of the surgery.
