Good news for the morning: Spoons' doctors came by and said everything looked good, that he was "even ahead of the curve" for getting better. So, that's good. Spoons sat up for the first time since the surgery -- the nurse said that sitting up the first time should be the worst of the pain. Then, he stood up and walked around the room a little. It looked hard for him - he was a little dizzy at first, and nauseated, but he said it felt good to stretch out after being in bed for a day. The doctors said the goal would be to do 4 laps around the floor, 2 times sometime today, and then add laps every day after.
As for last night, Spoons' room at the hospital wasn't as quiet as I had hoped. About an hour after I wrote the post below, we got a roommate: an older guy named Jerry from NJ* who needed a lot of attention from the staff. They were just admitting him, so they had to go through zillions of questionnaires, his IV kept falling out, things were beeping, etc etc. It's kind of crazy to me that shared rooms are the norm, since so much otherwise-private stuff is going on. Even though there's a big curtain in the middle of the room, I could (actually, had to) overhear all his conversations with his wife on the phone and all the conversations with the doctors. Luckily, Spoons seemed to sleep through most if it, and when he was awake it was because people were coming in to check on him as well. There was a lull in activity from about 11 pm to 6 am, so I did get some sleep at last.
The plan for the rest of the day is for Spoons to try to walk as much as he can. Since the doctors we have do about two of this surgery every week, they have a very strong idea about what works best for recovery and they emphasize walking, walking, walking as much as possible.
Next time: incentive spirometers!
* Note: If you know Ryan, this Jerry from NJ was not, in fact, Ryan's dad (thankfully, as I would not wish for Mr. Kelly to be in the hospital) but there were certainly similarities. :)
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