Day 5: Monday

I have ambition to be more imaginative with the titles of each post but, just like Saturday and Sunday, today's update is influenced by the day of the week. Hospitals are a 24/7 business, of course, but they really work Monday to Friday. It's just that they have coverage outside of regular hours.

I took the day off today because Dr. Pain had told us the plan and I wanted to be around to help Charlie through it.

Sunday night was not very restful for Charlie (and Aly), though he was asleep when I arrived at about 7. It's probably appropriate to spare you the details. Fill in your own blanks; Charlie can't get out of bed, has been on antibiotics and narcotics plus a regimen of medicine to make sure that those drugs don't lead to constipation problems. He was given some fluids overnight via his IV since there was some concern that he was not hydrating enough.

The plan for the day was mapped out for us. I will use what Americans call "Military Time" because I feel like the plan was similar to a military mission. Let's call it Operation Monday. The objective of Operation Monday was for Charlie to have his epidural removed and for his pain to be tolerable without it.

0830    Administer new pain medicine and switch off epidural anesthetic to spine
0900    Perform Physical Therapy and monitor effectiveness of pain medicine
1100    Team review of pain level and decision alignment
1200    Removal of epidural

To be honest, I cynically chuckled inwardly when this was described to me on Sunday. This required Pharmacy, Neurosurgery, Physical Therapy and The Pain Team® as well as the nurse to work together at their allotted time. My main worry was that the Neurosurgery team were going to try and do their thing at 12, regardless of the success or not of the preceding steps. 

It didn't start well because  today's pain doctor wanted to use the pill form rather than the liquid form of the pain medicine. So pharmacy got the order at about 8:30. It was totally agreed that the epidural was not going to be turned off until he was on his new pain medicine. 

Shortly after 10, a member of the neurosurgery team came to visit and had clearly got the message from our nurse that we were not loving that nothing had happened yet. Operation Monday was still only on paper. 

The Pain Team® (and more specifically Dr. Pain) have been featured a lot but Charlie is a patient of Neurosurgery and The Pain Team® advise / consult before Neurosurgery give the orders. So, given the stalled start to the day, I was pleased that this was acknowledged and Operation Monday now had a General. We were only an hour and a half behind schedule.

The pain pill was given, the epidural was switched off Physical Therapy went well and, by noon, things were really feeling like they were back on track. 

The General came to visit at 1330 - still just the one and a half hours behind schedule that she had conceded before. Decision was made to order the supplies and take out the epidural.

Occupational Therapy arrived and had a really good session with Charlie that included him standing up!


We were on a roll now and The General removed the epidural with almost no fussing from Charlie. Next up he had his Foley removed (ouch!) and he was no longer connected to anything.

Aly asked if it was ok for him to go for a ride and The General gave permission. So, we moved him into his wheelchair and he took a tour of the hospital. Of course, he took video for his audience so make sure you take a look at his channel (you might have to search through the surreal stuff that he is loving to produce lately to find it). He enjoyed himself, he sat on his own (with no support) when I lifted him from his chair to his bed and he has not complained of any pain. Operation Monday can be declared a success.

In summary, a really great day. He's ready to head to the IRU... as soon as there's a bed available, which is a story for another day.

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