Day 1 - Walking

Every morning in the hospital started with rounds from the doctors and surgeons. Most were ones that I had met pre-surgery. They basically checked my incisions, asked about pain and passing gas, and answered any questions I had. Luckily during this time they also okayed me for Morphine (we had tried Percocet early in the morning with no success) and I would get my catheter removed.

After transplant you become very, very used to discussing your bowel sounds and passing gas. This is important for most surgeries but even a little more so here since your intestines and bowels have to be moved out of the way to get to the kidney. I often had a stethoscope checking for sounds that my bowls were waking up. I seemed to be a little slower in this category... Yay.

Either way they cleared me for a liquid diet. Before hand I had lofty ideas of making my own juice and broth but I didn't have enough time before and definitely wasn't going to put in the effort afterwards. So I stuck to the broth and 100% juice they gave. It was actually better than I though. I didn't touch the sugar free popsicle or Ensure drink with high fructose corn syrup.

The first day passed rather uneventfully. I was still on an IV and was drinking on top of that, so need less to say I had to pee a ton. As in every hour, two at most, and in a little basket on the toilet that kept track of how much. Yeah it was weird but you get used to that too. At least it kept me up and out of bed. After the trip to and from my sister's room I found that walking was pretty easy so I was allowed to walk the halls independently with my IV for support. I still had to keep the "Fall Risk" bracelet on though and got some funny looks each shift change :). I spent the day alternating between walking the halls, napping, and hanging out in my sisters room with my family. I used the Morphine a little bit but the pain wasn't that bad when moving around so much.

Night was always the hardest for me. Again the air settled in my shoulders but the nurses said there was no other way to help besides walking. It keeps the air moving and it helps "wake up" your bowels to uh... Get rid of it... I decided every time that I woke up at night to pee I would do three laps. All night long until the surgeons came the next morning.