Rita, weren't you hooked up to a morphine pump? When they brought me up from surgery and for a day or so afterwards, I was hooked up to a morphine pump. However, I don't remember receiving instructions as to how many times I could hit the button. So, remembering that a friend of ours died as a result of morphine OD, I was only hitting the button once every four or five hours. The evening following my surgery, the nurse came in and asked how often I was hitting the morphine button. When I told her, she almost passed out! She said that I could NOT OD on it because it is set up a certain way where I could actually hit it every ten minutes and not OD...lol. Oh well, I don't remember being in much pain. They were trying to tell me I was in pain.
Getting back to our friend who passed away.....he had a hip replacement in one of our local hospitals in south Jersey. He came out of the operation, recovery room ..everything fine. When they brought him back to the room, he told his wife he was having pain. She called the nurse, the nurse said, "Oh, I'll fix you right up." She fixed him up alright. She gave him a shot and he never woke up. Scary. Unfortunately, his wife never investigated. It was sooo obvious he was given too much morphine. He lapsed into a coma, his wife thought he was sleeping. This is the main reason I chose to go to a Philadelphia hospital to have my surgery.