The surgery was last Thursday. I meant to blog the night before, capture my thoughts of fear, excitement and anticipation, but the to-do's got to be too much and I never got around to it. Having only had surgery as an infant, I had nothing to measure what I might feel like coming out of anaesthesia. One can hardly compare having their stomach ripped open to a bikini wax or broken arm, after all. There are degrees of pain, and this one went off the charts for me.
A disclaimer: If you're reading this and thinking about the surgery, please take the following passages with a grain of salt, I am a big baby when I'm sick.
Once in the operating room, after a plethora of delays including an emergency appendectomy of some poor sap and lots of waiting around, I was wheeled in and moved over to the right table and five or six people started hooking me up to all sorts of things, boots for my legs to prevent clots, an arm pressure cuff, blood oxygen monitor...you name it. I expected I would be asked to count down, but honestly the last thing I remember is the anaesthesiologist telling me I would start to feel sleepy, this was just the pre-op sedative. That was it though, I was out, gone...in la la land. Big Bird could have come into the operating room and done the surgery and I wouldn't have known the difference. I never even saw the surgeon in the room.
I woke up with lips and throat dryer than I have ever expereienced, but the recovery nurse couldn't give me anything to wet them yet, it was too early. I felt the stabbing pain in my right side every time I took a breath and it was all I could do to communicate that whatever she was giving me wasn't working. I just laid there with tears streaming down my face, moaning that it hurt out of my parched throat. Pretty soon though I was hooked up to my best friend for the next day and a half, the self-controlled morphine machine. The nurse also came over and gave me several shots of something that was very effective at killing the pain, but not long-lasting. It would die down after about five minutes and I'd want more. The morphine still didn't feel like it had kickec in. By the time I had left the recovery room she had given me four shots of that sweet nectar painkiller. She also gave me something of a gauze lollypop, drenched in water to suck on, and it was heaven. I am by no means religious, but God Bless that nurse, seriously.
Shortly after they wheeled me to my room on the tenth floor of that part of the hospital, and by some minor miracle, I got a private room. For this I also thanked my lucky stars. If one should have to be in the hospital, at their most vulnerable, unable to get up without help, unable to move without pain, unable to wipe their own ass (yes...it's true) then one should at least be able to do it alone, or around only other healthcare professionals; not someone else, and someone else's family.
For the first several hours I just layed there. Cathy came in, and brought my blanket and pillow from home, my teddy bear (yes, damnit I brought my bear) and I felt much better having her there. I was so glad I hadn't decided to be independent and stupid and do all of this on my own. So I just lay there, for the most part, trying to get comfortable, clicking that morphine button to the tune of 11cc per hour and I was wonderfully without pain.
By the time night rolled around there were threats of cathetars though, and looming nurses telling me it was time to get up and pee. Your body is a strange thing. They tell you that somehow during the course of the surgery, it can forget how to perform normal bodily functions, and if that occurs, they have to tube you. Something you really, really don't want. So I forced my way over and without getting too graphic, determined not to get a cathetar, made sure that I was not going to have one. Man, that sucked.
I also walked around a bit after that, and made a couple of loops around the ward holding on to my IV stand for dear life. Walking was good, but I only made it a couple of laps before I wanted to go back to the morphine sanctuary of my bed.
The night time wasn't much fun. Nurse's aids came in what seemed every hour to take my temp and blood pressure, which for most of the night was non-existent hovering at about 85/40. They didn't seem too concerned though and I drifted in and out of sleep.
Friday morning after more bathroom adventures it was time for the fluoroscopy, to make sure nothing was leaking and that the port had been placed right. Miserable. They cut you open and sew you back up and the next day they want you to move to an X ray table where they jossle you around and ask you to drink a cup full of foul tasting liquid at the same time. Again, I cried.
They let me out Friday night, after I could prove to them that I could eat the mushy foods they put in front of me. By the time it rolled around, I was so desperate to leave (they had unhooked me from my friend the morphine machine hours previously) that I didn't want to wait the 30 mins for the wheelchair escort. I walked my ass out of Mt. Sinai the way I came in.
It's been a couple of days now. Some pain is the same. The port site is still stabbing and very painful, and the gas trapped in the abdominal cavity is annoying and painful; and I have a numbness on my lower lip area apparently from the anaesthesia that hasn't gone away and is purely irritating.
I was tremedously ambitious thinking I would be well enough to work today. I'm just taking it a day at a time right now, but today I'm thinking it will be more like Wednesday or Thursday. It's getting easier to sleep. Last night I actually managed a couple of hours on my side, but it's still brutal getting up from laying down.
If there is or was going to be a regret moment in all of this, I suppose now is the time. Before I see any results, and when the pain is the worst. It can only go up from here.
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