are all post-op recovery room memories good?

After reading a lot of what different sisters' had to say-i'm glad that most experiences were good. unfortunately-MINE WAS NOT.
I woke up in recovery,freezing-teeth chattering. i was very
dizzy,light headed/propped myself up on one elbow-and looked
between my legs. the thin gown they had given me-had a large blood stain right between the legs!! i managed to feel further/and do you know-they didn't even have the courtesy or decency to slip elastic panties on me to keep the sanitary napkin
from falling off! what they had done was slide a sanitary napkin between my legs/and this is supposed to keep it secure!
Yeah right! Well, i called out for recovery room nurse-and said i'm sooo cold-please bring me warm blankets. she did. i also told
her-i needed elastic panties to put my napkin in-so i'll stop making a mess. i showed her the lousy napkin slapped between
my legs/no panties. she gave me panties and helped me put them on-and secure the napkin. stayed in recovery for about another hour/then up to my room/where my mom,dad,and son
had been waiting for me. was never so happy to get out of that hospital 2 days later. if we are going to talk about memories/
which thankfully most are good- bad memories and experiences like mine should be reported also!

Tina

Woke up groggy as hell and in massive pain. It was horrible. Had to keep begging for ice chips since the morphine drip really dried up my tongue and mouth. Stayed there what seemed like forever. Was not expecting that kind of pain. Had 3 c-sections but then i was numb from the waist down. should have asked for a epideral instead of general anasthesia

Hi Tina,

I've had them place a pad between my legs without the mesh panties both for my myomectomy and for my hysterectomy. Honestly, I didn't think this was something bad on their part, I figured that it must be very difficult to try to put a pair of panties on a person who is drugged up and unconscious. I don't think they did that to you because they were lacking in service, I think it's just standard practice. I walked around the hospital for two days with a pad between my legs with no patnies on when I was in for my myomectomy. I had a private room at the end of the hall and it was down a corridor so I had total privacy and didn't even know they had mesh panties until one of the nurses asked me if I wanted them.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but I just wanted to let you know that I think what you experienced is the norm.

Take care,
Mary Ellen

Hi,

I also woke up groggy and in pain. The OR nurse was named Carol, and I remember when I went into the OR, she held an oxygen mask over my nose while the Anesthesiologist put me out. She had on these funky cat-eye glasses, and those were the first things I saw when I woke up.

I remember waking up in horrible pain and moaning, "Carol, pain, pain!" I'm surprised I remembered what her name was. She put a warm blanket around me and then gave me some morphine.

I vaguely remember being wheeled to my room and my cheering section (my mom, my DD, and my two best friends) meeting us in the hallway on the way down. I remember being transferred to my bed, then the phone ringing and my friend asking if I wanted to talk to the caller (another friend from work.) I wasn't alert enough to talk to her.

My next memory is the night nurse standing by my bed, checking my IV, and the phone ringing at the nurses station. She walked out to answer it, and I suddenly got extremely nauseous. I let loose with projectile (just water from the ice chips). When the nurse came back, she asked me what happened, and I told her she'd been saved by the bell. If she hadn't left to answer the phone, she would have gotten the brunt of the

So, not all memories are good ones. But luckily, they're vague ones!

Hi Mary Ellen,
I had to re-read your reply twice. so-you've encountered this before?? WOW! how do they expect the napkin to stay secured
and not fall/and you're bleeding on the floor? I've had 6 D&C's
and one endometrial oblation-last resort to stop the heavy bleeding befor a hysterectomy/and I've always woken up in recovery with those gorgeous green panties on me-and a napkin
secured to the bottom. But then, again these procedures were down at different hospitals from where i had my TVH/a teaching hospital. Take care.

Tina

My memories of the hospital are great. I had heard horror stories before I went in and was kind of scared, but was releived. I told the Dr that I needed to be with my husband when I woke up and he agreeded because I have panic attacks and the told the anest. that I woke up cold and nauseated from surgery, so he gave me medicine that made it so I woke up great and I also woke up in my own room with my husband right there.
My nurses were very attentive and I had a good experience, I'm so sorry to hear about the bad experiences.

I don't remember anything from the recovery room, but once I came to in my room, I just had a pad between my legs with nothing holding it in place. They checked it frequently to see how much I was bleeding and then the next morning after my sponge bath, they gave me a pair of the mesh panties to put on. They probably fiqure with you just lying there, the pad's not going anywhere, so why bother.

sometimes you just have to look for the good, Im afraid...I am a glass half full gal myself, so I try to think positive when I can!

I hate that not everyone had the wonderful experience that I had...mine may be due to part because I am from a small town & I was the only hysterectomy scheduled that whole day...either way it happened to be, Im glad that I did it, & would go back & do it all over again, because I was hurting so bad before that its a relief now!

I have had quite a few surgeries in the last few years and i hate to say that i always have a bad experience in the recovery room, no matter how many people i tell ahead of time that i have asthma and i have a severe reaction to the anesthesia in great detail, i hand them copies of the reports from previous surgeries and they always say "Don't worry we will take good care of you here and you wotn have to be reintubated" then they tape my inhaler to my hand so it wont get lost and they always forget what i say once in recovery.

they put me on steroids ahead of surgeries for my lungs and give me treatments for 1 hour pre-op but once in recovery they let the breathing tube out and i stop breathing.. then there is commotion and yelling and before i know it i am being reintubated. because i naturally go into panic over not being able to breathe once a nurse kept giving me morphine because tears kept streaming out of my eyes she though i was in pain when i couldnt talk, and too much morphine can have severe respiratory effects, that didnt help, i remember her being yelled at when another woman (nurse i guess) in the room realized she was giving me even more morphine.

It can be very hard being reintubated more than once in a day, i have had my throat so raw i coughed and spit out blood clots for days, lost my voice... and it doesnt feel very nice when you have that done awake either.

I then have recurring asthma attacks until the anesthesia is out of my system.
i have to say of all my surgeries though i had the "best" recovery room experience with my hyst.. i only had to be reintubated twice and then they sedated me after my breathing was under control..so i woke up in my room later.

I do need to say though that the nurse i had in my room after all that during the afternoon and evening was one of the nicest and most caring women i have ever met. She really made me feel like she cared about how i felt.

I had a very similar experience as far as freezing in the Recovery Room was concerned. All I rember is opening my eyes to see the nurse whom I have met on 2 other occassions after surgery, and being unable to speak, but my teeth were chattering and I was shivering so much I felt like I could fall off the bed, I couldn't speak at all and luckily the nurse noticed the panic in my eyes and piled blankets and duvets on top of me to try to warm me up. I was absolutely terrified, it really freaked me out I can tell you.

But I was lucky!! enough to have been given the 'wonderful' mesh pants to keep my pad in place, but on previous occasions I had not, so I know how awkward it can be without them.

Anyway keep your spirits up hopefully things can only get better now....

Sam