December 30, 2011
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Surgery Updates
I’m alive! If you’re friends with me on facebook, you know that already, but today is really the first day, I’ve felt like blogging. Surgery went beautifully. My surgeon actually does the stitches on the inside and has some kind of glue on the outside to minimize scarring. I’m excited to see just how small my incisions heal to.
The only time I felt severe pain was right after. I remember coming out of anesthesia, moaning in pain. It felt like an elephant was walking on my chest. The nurse wasn’t having it and kept telling me that I had enough pain medicine in me to kill a horse and that I shouldn’t be in any pain. Just the kind of nurse I needed. LOL! I was wheeled to my room and still groggy. The night nurse wrapped me in a binder around my torso. That thing rocks. I felt no pain as soon as that thing was on. Hubs stayed with me and I tried to sleep. As soon as my family left, I started my laps around the hospital floor. Cowboy did some of the laps with me. I knew that I needed to do as many of those as possible so I could wake up my bowels and move all that extra air they pump into you out. I started slow, 1 lap, then 4, then 30 minutes straight, then 45 minutes straight, then an hour. I’d do them every hour and I’d sleep in between the hours. I met a couple of my fellow surgery buddies along the way and advised them to walk as much as possible. They weren’t lucky enough to get binders, but I assured them the walking would help.
This entire time, I couldn’t have anything to eat or drink. I wasn’t hungry, but I was super thirsty. I kept brushing my teeth to keep my mouth moist. I did my upper gi test in the morning to check for leaks. The first thing I got to drink was barium, gross! Everything checked out fine and I was finally allowed to sip some broth, water, popsicles. I knew my catheter would be coming out soon so I saved some pain meds just in case it hurt. It didn’t. Thank you baby Jesus. I stopped taking my pain meds and started walking, and going to the bathroom all my myself. I was anxious to head home, but that wasn’t happening until later in the evening.
I didn’t want to take pain meds when I got home either, but when my mom came to visit yesterday she told me that I needed to so that I could keep moving and healing. I’ve been taking them every 8-10 hours and it’s been working beautifully for me. I’m finally able to have full liquids, so cream soups, protein shakes. Sipping slowly isn’t easy and liquid vitamins are so gross. Other than that, I have no complaints.
The weirdest thing is not being hungry. Like not at all. When I do eat, I feel full quickly. I need to get more protein in, and that will probably be my next meal. Protein! I’m so glad everything went so well and that I’m not in severe pain anymore. As far as numbers go, I haven’t weighed myself yet, but I did get to my pre-surgery goal weight and I don’t feel bloated or like there’s extra liquid still in me. I’ll definitely update my weight progress on Tuesday. While in the hospital we noted that my bed had a scale built into it and hubs has lost another 5 lbs so total lost is around 35 lbs for him. Yay!
Comments (3)
Glad it went ok! You know they say to wrap the torsos like that for women who have had c-sections. Must be the same kind of support, huh?
Dude, i am so impressed and proud of you both. SERIOUSLY.
Ha, Marianne… thats EXACTLY what I was going to write.. the binder and walking sounds like my c-section recovery. I felt like ASS when I was in bed, but as soon as the Vicodin kicked in and I started walking around the hospital, I felt great.