Day 2 Post-Op: The Freight Train, A Couch Full of Towels, and Borrowed Blood
By Saturday morning, my body decided to cash every check the last two surgeries had written.
The night before had been another long, grueling exercise in endurance. I managed maybe thirty minutes of fragmented sleep, trapped in that terrible intersection of deep surgical pain and total, wired alertness. I would have traded almost anything for even the slightest wave of natural drowsiness just to give my mind an escape.
Around 4:00 AM, desperate for a change of scenery and tired of staring at the ceiling, I got out of bed and into the bedside chair. That experiment lasted only a few minutes. All at once, an intense, suffocating heat swept through my entire body. I was burning up from the inside out.
Shortly after, an occupational therapist came in, and we attempted a short walk to the bathroom and back. The trip there was fine, but on the return leg – scarcely twenty steps total – the floor fell out from under me. A sound like a literal freight train began roaring through my head. My ears became so intensely clogged, muffled, and loud that I could barely hear the room around me, and the pressure in my skull felt unbearable.
I was in full autonomic overload. My nervous system, battered by two days of intense surgery, simply short-circuited when asked to pump blood uphill.
The staff hurried to guide me safely back to the bed, and the moment my head hit the pillow, my vitals showed it, my heart rate spiked. What followed was thirty to forty-five minutes of pure, chaotic temperature swings, shaking violently with bone-deep chills one minute, and drenched in heavy, dripping sweats the next.
The nursing staff rallied in an incredible synchronized dance. They rotated hot towels, cold packs, wet towels, and dry towels, trying desperately to calm my system. Within an hour, the couch in my room was completely buried beneath a mountain of pillows and discarded blankets that were being cycled onto and off of my bed every few minutes.
Once the lab work came back, the mystery vanished: I needed a blood transfusion.
Between Wednesday’s anterior cages and Thursday’s seven-hour posterior fusion, I had lost far too much blood. Even though they had used a cell saver during surgery to recycle and clean my own lost blood, my body simply couldn’t replenish the volume fast enough. So, they hooked up an IV and began pushing units directly into my veins, while the surgical collection bag hanging from my back continued its steady work of collecting post-op drainage. Until that back drain stops filling and the doctors give the word to pull it, I am firmly anchored to this mattress.
It was a long, heavy, exhausting day, but the room never felt empty. Kim, my dad, and Matt traded shifts sitting by my bedside, providing a steady wall of love and reassurance. Abby came down to the hospital with Matt to sit with me as well. Having her there was the sweetest breath of fresh air. She distracted me by diving into everything happening in her world up in Boulder, telling me all about her classes, her professors, and the fascinating subject matter she’s digging into this semester. Hearing her voice light up about her studies was such a comforting, normal tether to the outside world right when everything around me felt suffocating.
Every single hospital staff member I have encountered, from the surgeons and pain specialists to the floor nurses, nursing assistants, and therapists, has been nothing short of extraordinary. They have met me with patience, kindness, engagement, and genuine care at every turn.
My dad has had his entire church and community holding us in prayer, and lying there in the middle of all that turbulence, I told him how much that truly matters. To know that people aren’t just praying for my healing body, but for Dr. Allison’s hands, for the nurses running in with hot towels at all hours, and for Matt and our kids holding down the home front, you can actually feel it. I truly believe I am enveloped in love and light, and it is palpable even here in the dark, uncomfortable corners of this hospital room.
