Anti-Bacterial Shower - Night Before Surgery

 The last two days have been... waiting. Its been too bloody cold out to do much or go anywhere, thus we've just been hanging out and seeing the odd movie (or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 as that was one that I wanted to see before surgery). The days have felt like we are waiting, and as its gotten closer and closer to D-Day (Donation Day), the air has become thick with anticipation. This has been 11 months in the making and it's finally here.

Tonight we got my bag for the hospital all together - pyjamas, slippers, toiletries, yoga pants, laptop, charger, phone, phone charger, books etc. Simple enough as most of it hadn't gotten unpacked in the first place, but still something weird to do. I've never been in the hospital overnight before, so this has been a whole new experience.

The final thing to do tonight was shower with a special anti-bacterial sponge. Two of these were given to me on Monday at the Pre-Op clinic, and I was given special instructions. One I was to use the night before surgery (tonight) and the other the morning of. I am to enter the shower as normal, wash my hair, face, whatever, then use the sponge to first wash the surgical area (left abdomen) then the rest of my body. The sponge had 3 parts to it. 1 was a soft sponge part that looked like it had been doused in some sort of liquid that had a faint red-ish colour, which I'm assuming was the anti-bacterial agent. The second part was a clear scrubber (attached to the sponge) with fine bristles that I was to use to scrub off the lather generated by the sponge part. The third was this light blue plastic thing that was sticking out of the soft sponge part. It came out and was a tool for cleaning under the nails. They weren't joking when they said they wanted all of me nice and clean.
It didn't smell like anything, and lathered mostly like regular soap, although some of the lather had a reddish-orange colour to it, It didn't colour my skin or anything like that, which was nice. And the bristles were soft and pliable, they didn't hurt at all, it felt like a very gentle exfoliation.

Not a big deal or anything like that, but was interesting to know I would need to do this as in all the research I did, I didn't find anything about a pre-op shower.

As for D-Day, my lovely husband will be blogging for me with his insights on how it went, any useful information he can find, and what the initial stages of the recovery process are like. I'll come back to the blog when I am coherent, as apparently this make take a day or so as I will be on some pretty strong drugs. I want to keep this as real-time as possible, and I hope that my posts as well as my wonderful husband's will help in whatever way. If there is anything specific that you would like either of us to take special note of and blog about, please comment and we will do our best to provide the answers you are looking for.

Many thanks for all of your support, and I am looking forward to blogging again soon.