| Current mood: |  contemplative |
| Entry tags: | health |
Surgery Update!
So I'm still alive. Everything went pretty well, I think, and I'm recovering quickly.
I got to the hospital at 10:30, then waited around for four hours until surgery. Everyone was super nice, though. :) The hardest part pre-surgery was putting in the IV (I'm a really hard stick, and it took almost 30 minutes to get the IV in my hand), but the anesthesiologist was great. The surgery itself took about 2 1/2 hours -- of course, that's according to the parents, as I was obviously not around for that. During surgery, they took my stomach (previously the size of a football) and created a new pouch (now about the size of a finger). They also bypassed about five feet of intestine and connected it to my new tummy pouch.
After surgery, I woke up in the recovery room, and started praying for death. OMG PAIN. It took awhile for them to bring it back under control, but when they did, I was reunited with my parents in my (thankfully private) room. I had a totally awesome button I could push whenever I wanted more pain meds, and by about 11pm, I was feeling pretty good. This was actually not so good, because I dropped my CD player, and without thinking (like I said, I was feeling awesome), I rolled over out of bed to pick it up. OUCH. Then I spent the next four hours trying to get the pain back under control.
The doctor sent me home Tuesday morning. I was given the option of spending an extra day in the hospital, but I figured, what the hell, I'm feeling good, let's go home. Um, no. If I could do anything over again, it would be that. Day Two sucked giant monky balls. I couldn't find a comfortable position at all (and boy, how I was missing my adjustable hospital bed) and I could no longer shoot pain meds right into my IV, I had to take them orally, but of course I couldn't keep them down. Day Two was spent being miserable and weepy and nauseous and generally regretting everything and wishing I would just die already. Day Two, yes, has capital letters now, because it's suck was EPIC. And now whenever my brother makes some crack about surgery being cheating, or taking the "easy way", I'm like, "DAY TWO MOTHERFUCKER."
Day three was marginallly better, mostly because I could keep down the pain meds. Day four I felt almost normal, aside from some annoying twinges in my abdomen. And today I feel really hunky dory. Still a little sore, and I've got a wicked headache. Also, mood swings liek whoa, but I'm blaming the vicodin for that, because I generally have a pretty bad reaction to vicodin.
Weird shit: I'm not hungry at all, which is just creepy, as I haven't had any food since Saturday. (Protein drinks and water, that's all.) So, okay, that works. I pretty much have to force myself to get anything down (eating makes me feel sick), but luckily, I haven't had any upchuck issues since Day Two. Also, I have terrible breath that frequent brushing isn't really helping. Sigh.
I lost 13 lbs by the time I made it to the hospital, which was great (the doctor wanted me to lose 5-10 lbs pre-surgery). I haven't weighed myself since then...they warned me at the hospital that weight loss might be initially slow, a) because they filled me up with tons of fluid, and b) because all the weight I lost pre-surgery was probably water weight, and now I've got to lose genuine weight, which takes longer. But I'm not really stressing about it. It'll happen when it happens. :)
I really appreciate everyone's prayers and good thoughts! So far, this has been a (mostly) good experience.
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lizzypaul) wrote,
