Surgery Recall Part 1

Note: I started this yesterday thinking I would add to it as the day went on. I find myself napping a lot though so I will break it up into parts...

While it's fresh in my mind I thought I would write a bit about the surgery and how things went. I got to come home last night (Friday) and was resting on my couch by 8pm. That was wonderful! Been resting and recovering since then quite nicely and will get back to that later.

Starting Wednesday morning I was on a restricted diet knowing that I had to start the bowel prep around noon. I pushed that back to around 1pm wanting to make a last minute trip to the grocery store and make sure that Noah got home from school okay. My doctor had warned me that it was going to be unpleasant, that I would hate her and probably want nothing to do with her come Thursday morning. Well, the bowel prep part of it wasn't pleasant by any means but the massive headache and severe nausea that I got about an hour after taking the liquid torture was far worse. Apparently some people can have this reaction but most don't - yeah! lucky me! I was supposed to keep drinking clear liquids until midnight Wednesday then nothing after that. I couldn't even do that, too much nausea. Any nervousness I had about the surgery was pretty much squelched by my desire to be knocked out and relieved of the migraine like headache and massive waves of nausea. We left here at 7am on Thursday, at the hospital by 730am and I was quickly checked in and led back to my pre-op station. I thought, more than once that my head was going to explode from the bright lights overhead. They tried to keep them off as much as possible but had to turn them on for things like putting in my IV fluids. Surgery started a little bit late but almost immediately upon being wheeled into the operating room the anesthesiologist gave me some happy drug and within minutes of that knocked me out. The next thing I knew, the nice gal, whose name I will never ever remember because they gave me some amnesia drug (oh yeah Janet, that was good!), was asking me if I wanted something for the pain. After prying my tongue and lips from my teeth...my goodness was my mouth dry, and begging for a wet swab, I said that if she could give me pain medication then I would take it - now. I remember her asking me on a scale of 1 to 10 where my pain level was and I remember answering 8 but I don't remember the pain. I'm thinking that the amnesia drug did it's stuff! I'm not sure how long I was there but remember them telling me that my surgery lasted a bit longer than expected and was told later by my doctor that my body had a tendency to ooze. They had to stop and mop up the ooze then continue with the surgery. Gross! She then told me that I would be in recovery for while then moved up to my room. I will have to ask Joel exactly when I got out of surgery and then moved from recovery to my room. I don't remember at all.

Note: Just asked Joel...he talked to the doctor at about 1:40, then he met me at my room at about 2:45. So I was in surgery about an hour longer than expected, then an hour in recovery.

I remember being wheeled to my room, wow that was quite a hike! The surgery took place in the new state of the art operating suites in the new Firstenburg Tower and my room was in a completely different wing of the hospital. It felt like the walk lasted forever. I also recall thinking at that time that my headache was gone but not the nausea. UGH! I had that same car sick feeling on the trip to my room as I do on those back winding roads when out driving. It turns out that I don't come out of the anesthesia quite as gracefully as others. I was sick to my stomach and nauseous until around 11pm that night. It wasn't until then that I was finally thinking that I probably won't need to beg for the anti-nausea medication anymore. However, I was still touch and go. At one point during the night the nurse wanted to move me to change the bedding and whatever other torture she wanted to inflict upon me and I'm sorry to report that I wasn't very nice. I at one point told her to let me lay back down or I was going to barf all over her. Nice huh?

They brought in a very simple breakfast on Friday, I can't remember all that was on the tray but mostly liquids with a small bowl of rice cereal. I drank the juice and tried a bite or two of the cereal...it was all I could stomach. Come lunch time I managed to get down the little bit of fruit and half of the bread roll and the juice...but the beef stew stuff was nasty and not going anywhere near my mouth. By the time dinner rolled around I was able to eat a bit more but am still on a limited diet...so some rice, some steamed veggies and a couple sips of coffee was all I had.

...to be continued