Post-groin dissection - From hospital - Monday

I am writing this from my hospital bed, able to type again now my hand's not hooked up to morphine. It's not all good news, as you will find out, but I will write and post each day at a time so it's in manageable sections. My experience of going into theatre is pretty much the same as last time so I won't rehash it. The surgeon marked these two extra moles to remove (there is a third under my wide local excision scar but they didn't remove it because they ran out of time):

Mr Brackley told me just before I went under that my CT scan had come back as clear (hooray!) and I went in at  11am then woke up in recovery at 2.35pm. I had been told the operation would take 2-3 hours so I was wondering why it ended up a lot longer. I later found out it was a combination of the extra removal of two moles, and because I needed to be intubated so I could breathe properly. 

I was hooked up to morphine via a device called a PCA - patient controlled analgesia:

Basically it's what it sounds like - a machine with a big syringe of morphine inside. The syringe is attached to a tube which goes into my hand, and it puts me in control of my own pain relief although there is a 5-minute lockout between doses to prevent overdosing. All I do when I want a shot is press a button and it is delivered painlessly through this device in my hand:

The reason there's a capped-off bit is that I initially had a drip in there to hydrate me too. The morphine was making me very sick and the lowest point came that evening when I needed the toilet for the first time. After rejecting a bedpan and a commode, I decided I could walk across the room to get to the loo myself. With my husband holding me up and the support of my wheely stand, I managed to take three steps before the pain made me stop. I did get there eventually and discovered that one of morphine's side effects is difficulty to urinate. What usually takes 30 seconds literally took 20 minutes, and I had to keep shouting to the nurse and my husband that I was okay. When I had finished, I had to go the 15 metres back to my bed in a wheelchair, during which I needed a break to stop and throw up. The first day was always going to be the worst, and later that night I had an antiemetic (anti-sickness) jab which did wonders and I didn't throw up at all after that. I also discovered that I am to be given anti-coagulant injections into my stomach each night and antibiotics.

This is how much fluid had collected by the end of the day: