Over the course the afternoon and evening Chris slowly became more awake.  He found the catheter a constant irritation and was suffering from a croaky dry throat.  He had two IV lines attached to him, one giving him fluids and one giving him pain relief and antibiotics. He could drink water through a straw which he did quite often as his throat was very uncomfortable.

Sally was with us constantly, checking on all of Chris’ readings from the monitoring equipment he was also attached to – a blood pressure monitor and a heart rate monitor. She also encouraged Chris to move about a little on the bed even turning him on his side every now and then and supporting him with pillows.

This was the pattern for the rest of the day and through the night.  Steve went back to the hotel about 10.30pm and I slept on a ‘pull-down’ bed next to Chris.  I didn’t sleep much as Sally and the nurse who took over for the night shift came in every hour to check on Chris and make notes in his hospital file.

Chris seemed to be fairly comfortable throughout the night and when asked what his pain score was on a scale of 1 – 10 (with 10 being unbearable pain) his highest score was a 3. The biggest problem he had was feeling sick and this is apparently very common after a long anaesthetic and having spinal surgery that requires you to be lying on your stomach for hours.  Hopefully this will improve over the coming days.

I popped out of his room for a short while to phone my mum and let her know how Chris was doing and the whole family is thrilled that the surgery has gone so well.