the first night after surgery was particularly harrowing because they gave me morphine. Morphine kills the pain, but it also gave me trouble breathing. So, they hooked up this pulse-oxygen reader to my finger. And the alarm in ICU would go off everytime my oxygen went too low. I found that if I didn't consciously think about breathing, the oxygen alarm would go off. I spent a very unrestful night waking up everytime the alarm went off. Then I'd start taking deep breaths until the alarm would stop. It went off every hour or so until around midnight.
Around midnight, the nurse in ICU found me still awake. He asked me if I wanted some painkillers to help me sleep. I was like no. He gave me the option of percoset. a milder painkiller. He said it was just like aspirin. So, I took that and was able to get a few more hours of sleep without worry about breathing.
Posted by joel at October 27, 2005 12:17 PM