Pneumonia Great Health Families.com

Did you know that when you are in the hospital as a patient and you see your own personal physician in the halls he is not allowed to come in your room unless you request? I did not either but that is what I found out when I saw my primary care doctor in the halls on the third night post-surgery. I asked him to come in because I was not feeling all that great. They gave me a blood transfusion earlier in the day but that was not the problem. I felt like I was developing bronchitis or pneumonia.

He had asked about the surgery and how I was doing but I told him I felt crackly in the bottom of my right lung and I was coughing. He listened and sure enough I had developed bronchitis at least but he ordered a chest x-ray just to be sure. It turns out that I had pneumonia not bronchitis the doctor figures it was because I was intubated for so long. My surgery was 18 hours and then I was still intubated for a while after surgery. He gave me some antibiotics and some medicine to stop the coughing. Let me say coughing with a hip to hip abdominal incision, chest incisions and 5 JP Drains was very painful. I was grateful for the medicine to stop the coughing but this complication meant I was not going to be going home in 2 days.

When the doctor left I called my husband and just cried. I missed him and the kids so much I really wanted to go home.

The next day my husband came up to visit me before work to make sure I was ok. We ate breakfast together and went for a walk but I was very short breathed so the walk was a very quick one. He brought the kids up after school and we ate dinner together. I told them that I was not going to be coming home tomorrow like we hoped and I tried not to cry. There were definitely tears in my eyes because the kids busted me on it. They said it would be ok, I felt rather stupid my little kids were comforting me instead of me comforting them.