Two-stage urethroplasty: stage 1, 5 days after surgery

My final night in the hospital was probably the best since surgery. I’d set alarms to wake me up to take morphine so that it wouldn’t wear off completely during the night, that seemed to be a success.

Just after breakfast the surgeon came round and removed the dressing on my penis. Apparently everything is looking good, you can see that the graft is looking pink and healthy through the gel dressing in the photos. So I’m to come back through in a week so that she can have another look and I can get rid of at least one of the catheters.

Actually getting discharged took most of the rest of the day. A nurse turned up with a load of discharge paperwork. I refused the catheter bags they were offering since I’ve already got a good stock of ones that I know I can get on with. Then a junior doctor came to discuss prescriptions for drugs to take home.

The admin staff on the ward were kind enough to arrange for transport from home to the hospital for next week’s visit, since I can’t drive or take public transport. Dealing with the part of our county council that handles that stuff is usually unpleasant.

So I finally got away from the ward and stopped at the pharmacy in the hospital to pick up my prescriptions. Except the junior doctor had forgotten to submit them (electronically). My husband went and spoke with him and fixed that. Next we discovered that he hadn’t remembered all of the drugs, but the pharmacist called him and sorted that out.

I still couldn’t pick up the last of the drugs because some delay in the system meant that the pharmacist couldn’t see that prescription, so we decided to pick them up on our way home.

The drive home was fairly comfortable, some pain on rough sections of road but nothing too bad. My cheek and jaw were starting to hurt again though.

For the next week I’m pretty much trapped at home and to keep activity to a minimum. I may have a go at working from home but I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to sit at a desk.