Snap part 2

Pinderfields

The time is flying by, I'm very tired and sleep quite a lot which is a poor excuse for leaving part 2 so long!
Once I had been robed up, the nurse walked me through to the pre-op room and I laid down on the bed. It was obvious that her role was to monitor my condition and engage me in mindless banter. The two anaesthetists used ultrasound to locate the nerves in my neck and shoulder and block them one at a time with an injection.
They worked quickly and very skilfully but when they took the pot off my arm, I was surprised to find that I could still feel it, in fact it was quite painful. They were too!
The pre-op room is a short corridor with a double door at each end. My bed was pushed through the second set of doors into the theatre. There were half a dozen people in there, all busy with their own tasks. A stand was fitted to the bed just above my chest and I gathered that my arm was going to be strapped to that whilst they did the operation. The problem was the anaesthetic wasn't blocking the pain, my arm had gone numb but I could still feel my whole arm. They gave me an injection and asked me how I was - nothing to report.
What seemed like sixty seconds later I was in a recovery ward with about thirty other patients, all post-op!

The broken olecranon
is clearly visible here

A view from above

After the op

Four torsion bands

23 metal clips and a lovely scar

Not only had I no recollection of the operation, but I didn't even remember drifting off to sleep! I'm really very glad as I think it would have been an awful experience having your elbow opened up a few inches in front of your face! The operation seems to involve exposing the joint and fitting the metalwork and that isn't going to be pleasant!
I could feel my fingers but the strange thing was I couldn't move them, no matter how hard I tried.
I can only describe the sensation of post-op as euphoria. You seem to be floating in a lovely warm cloud!
After a while, they moved me to a separate room on a different ward. The nurse kept coming in every half an hour or so and doing my observations and she said it was all looking good. I was still very sleepy when they moved me into a ward with three other patients.
My overall impression with Pinderfields is extremely good. The teams of staff were proficient, well equipped, extremely skilful and above all, gave me first class treatment. A&E in particular were superb and the fracture clinic and physio clinic were first class. You can probably guess that there is a "but" coming here!
At seven pm, they gave me a huge antibiotic injection and said it was the first of three which were to be given every six hours. I fell asleep as soon as the lights were turned off and woke up at three minutes to one. No point in falling back to sleep, I thought, as they will be giving me another jab soon. The ward was extremely quiet and I couldn't hear anyone moving about so at about 2am, I buzzed the nurse and asked her about my antibiotic. She said they had been very busy with admissions and that she would bring it.

Nice card from work!

I woke up at seven am in quite a lot of pain. The nurse gave me two codeine tablets and said that the drugs run would be round at eight am so I could have more then if I needed it. As it happened, the run came round much later and they only gave me one tablet despite me asking for more. The arm was quite painful!
The man in the bed next to me was admitted at the same time. He had fallen into a trench and got his foot caught, badly breaking several bones in his ankle. He was in agony and they gave him some morphine. This worked and he went to sleep. A few hours later he woke up and asked the nurse for some more pain relief and was told that the drug trolley would be around at dinner time. When it came around they said there wasn't any for him and that they would check. They didn't and when I left the ward at six pm, he still hadn't been given any!
The doctor confirmed I could go home just after dinner. I asked the nurse what pain relief I would be given and she said she would check. Initially, they said I would have codeine which I knew wouldn't be strong enough so I asked for something stronger. I was in quite a lot of pain but they couldn't give me anything because my notes had been sent down to the pharmacy.

Looking wasted1

My wife arrived but I couldn't really talk to her very much because of the discomfort. When the nurse eventually brought me a pack of drugs to take home, she was very dismissive and said that she thought we were "having a go at her". Something was very wrong that day, pain relief is essential and it wasn't being properly managed! I was also concerned that when it was tie to go home, they just said "theres your drugs, you can go". I wasn't told what to expect, when they would be in touch, what to do and what not to do etc.
Its a real shame because I would rate the rest of my experience at Pinderfields very highly.
As I can type (slowly!), Ill add another post in a couple of days about how the recovery is going.