Day 2-4

The last days in the hospital went pretty well. However, there was one big problem. My epidural ran out of fluid and the nurses didn't know how to change the bag!!! This was on Day 2:

I woke up at 6am from my epidural machine beeping. I paged the nurse to have her check it. She said she would call anesthesia because she didn't think they were allowed to change it. (This meant I would have to wait for someone from anesthesia to come up to my floor and change the bag. That would take forever!). About half and hour later she came in my room with a new bag. She said they told her that she was allowed to change the bag. What a relief! Right? Wrong! No one on the entire floor remembered how to change the bag and the password to unlock the machine. They were messing around with it for an hour before they finally decided they needed to call someone. (This has been 1 1/2 hours without the epidural controlling my pain. I was in so much pain I couldn't move. I started crying but had to stop myself because it hurt so much. I think I was gripping the blanket so tight my knuckles turned red). They kept messing around with it and it seemed like forever until they got someone that knew the code. Luckily, my boyfriend came as quick as he could and got to be with me the last half hour of this. I think I almost broke his hand I was squeezing so tight! Overall, I was without an epidural for around 2- 2 1/2 hours. It then didn't kick in right away. The anesthesiologist finally came up around 8:30 and boosted up the amount and told the nurses to give me some pain meds. Finally the pain calmed down.

Sometimes this happens. Things go wrong and people don't know what to do. I was a very unique case and the nurses weren't trained in my specific surgery. However, what really made me upset is that...IT HAPPENED TWICE!!!! The next night again the nurses didn't know the code to unlock the machine. They didn't take in account the increased amount of fluid from when the anesthesiologist changed it and it ran out quicker. I was thinking to myself "NOOO!!". But luckily they worked quickly and got the code within half an hour.

My hospital stay was very nice. Everyone was very kind and seemed to care about me and how I felt. Other than this the pain was controlled extremely well. This was the only major hiccup.