Day 3 Post Cystectomy

The doctor on call (not my regular doctor) shows up in the morning and says it appears there is a blockage in my stoma, so he irrigates the stents and things start flowing again.  And flow they did.  The JP drain was draining so fast they had to hook me up to some type of suction machine to keep up with it.  A Jackson-Pratt drain (also called a JP drain) is a closed-suction medical device that is commonly used as a post-operative drain for collecting bodily fluids from surgical sites. The device consists of an internal drain connected to a grenade-shaped bulb via plastic tubing.  So this tube with a bulb on the end is coming out of the left side of my stomach, with my stoma and urostomy bag on the right side.  The hole that the JP drain is coming out of is also draining, so the nurses are keeping gauze on it and changing it every hour or so.  Everyone is telling me how great I look (I have olive skin so my color must have looked better than they expected) and that I was doing great.  But I really wasn't doing great.  I should have been getting ready to leave the hospital the next day (Sunday) or Monday, but such was not the case.