I made it!!
I am on the other side. And what a side it will be.
So, I figure I should give the whole story, detail by detail, both to catch all of you up and chronicle it somewhere for the future folk. Here goes:
The last couple days befiore surgery sucked. My mom came up to stay and was so patient with me even though I HAD NOTHING NICE TO SAY AT ALL. (sorry for the caps, stupid button.) Long atory short, I now own a sweet bathrobe and some way cute pjs and my mom obviously loves me cuz she didn;t try to kill me and she is still speaking to me.
The mornign of surgery I got up at 4:45 or so and took a shower and got everything together to go to the hospital; we had to bethere at 6. We made it on time and got to the waiting room and sat for a bit with everyone else who had surgery that morning. The check in nurse, in her irish accent, kept saying "Today's the day!" I think she knew what I was there for cuz I don't think back surgery would have prompted such a wink-and-a-smile treatment.
From the surgical waiting area we went up to pre-op and sat in a curtained room where I had to get naked and wear a beautiful gown. Not hot. We hung out there, my mom and i, for like 20 minutes or so while i insisted we had been forgotten about, repeatedly. My mom read my whole medical chart that they left sitting there so that was slightly entertaining. Finally a nurse came in and put in my IV, i think. The anasthesiologist came by and chatted with me and my surgeon came by, i think. it was way early and i didnlt have coffee so it is a little blurry. I think they gave me a little valium ir something in my iv and to be honest, i don't even remember going into the operating room. I think I pretty much just fell asleep. I slightly remembering them telling me they were gonna out the mask on me and to breathe but that's it. I do remember sayingbye to my mom when they wheeled me away but that was it!
The waking up was... unpleasant. I remember hurting. I remember being whiny and saying "ow" a lot. I remmeber being totally nauseous. I remmber them giving me pain meds and stuff until they finally put a shot directly in me instead of in my IV. I was hurting and it sucked. I sat around in post-op for a while and was in a ndout of conciousness. Finally, right as they were about to take me to my room, my mom snuck in to post-op! She said someone told her a back way to sneak in to see me. It was nice. :)
So my mom went up to my room with me. I actually got a provate room - woo hoo!!! This way my mom could sleep over and I didn;t have to deal with some weird sick person near me. I don't deal well with sharing space. So there we were, the three of us - me, my mom and my morphine button. Let me tell you, I was tappingout melodies on that thing I pushed it so often. I just knew that button equalled better so I just pushed whenever I wanted a change for the better. Wanna sleep? Push. Got pain? Push. Nauseous? Push. Bored? Push. It was freakin' great. I have never been a fan of the opiates (I am a straight up amphetamine girl) but they did their job for me. I don't see a big future in heroin for me though, the morphine was just kinda dull.
The first night there I found out that I apparently stop breathign while I am falling asleep. Apparently I do have sleep apnea. Who knew? So I kept getting woken up by this obnoxious machine that would go of when my blood oxygen went below a certain number. It sucked. My poor mom got woken up by it everytime too - I felt so bad. The night nurse also accused me of drinking tghe water she gave me for my mouth mop (think tiny sponge ont he end of a cocktail straw). To be honest, I was taking in as much as I accidentally could. I was dying of thirst!!!! Youwould be amazed at how helpful something lieka little mouth mop can be when you are totally high and the thirstiest you have ever been in your entire life. I feel like I have been in that position before.
So I had this great nurse, Emely, who took care of me the first day. She was nice and cheery and tolerated me. She was probably my age, too, so it made it easier. In my opiate haze I don't remmeber much. I got some injections in my stomach - blood thinner. I was wicked thirsty for a whole lot of time cuz I wasn;t allowed to drink anything until I did my "swallow test." Sounds way dirtier than it was. They made me drink this disgustingly foul liquid so they could xray me to make sure I didn't have any leaks in side. It was fuckign awful. Truly. I also had t lie flat on my back for it so it really hurt. Luckily, I had my trusty button so I just kept push-push-pushin' away to get through it all. I have seriously never been so thirsty in my life though and if that test allowed me some f'ing water, i would have drank a whole glass. I think the tech who did it was kinda smarmy, too. Reminded me of the slimy dudes in my hebrew class at SMC. The kinda guy who uses his doctor status to get laid. Blech.
So after I finally got back to my room after that test and proceeded to get incredibly nauseous and do some dry heaving off the side of my bed. It was awful. I kept pushing the nurse button and Emely finally came in to give me something to help. It felt so bad, though. It was awful. My mom had gone to run some errands during my test so she was gone, which was fine, but she finally got back and I was just yuck. I was trying to just sleep it all away, I guess. I couldn't keep my eyes open for more than, like, 10 minutes. Andrea was also trying to make her way to the hospital at that time after driving up from LA that morning to take over for my mom so she could go home. Andrea kept getting lost, though, so she kept calling and I felt so bad that she couldn;t find the place cuz the directions were wrong and aaahhh! She did make it though, poor andrea.
My mom left on wednesday afternoon and I was doing ok. I was sleeping a lot but I felt pretty ok. Ok except for the raging caffeine headache I had developed. Let me give a little advice, folks. Don't think the morphine in the hospital can overcome your caffeine headache. It didn;t even make a dent. I was in more pain from the headache than my surgery, by far. It was likehaving a five day migraine. It didn;t go away until Friday and I am dead serious. Morphine didn't take it away. I mean, wtf?!?! That was awful.
So I was gonna go home on Wednesday but I kinda started doing not so hot. I had walked around a few times on Tuesday and they tookt he catheter out on Tuesday afternoon so I was going to the bathroom on my own and stuff. (catheters are way weird, btw. I felt like I had to pee all the time cuz, well, I kinda was, I guess.) I was doing great thogh. I felt good, I was cheerful and alert and stuff. Then came the dreaded cranberry juice incident of '05. Terrible idea. Who knew that 10ccs of watered down juice could make one heave as I did. Poor andrea had flailing, heaving me to look at as she tried to figure out what to do. I hate throwing up, too. It just makes me cry. Nothing reduces me to 7 year old Neely like severe nausea. It passed but so did my whole "I am gonna go home today" idea. We stayed another night. The surgeon had coem to see me and everything and given me my all clear to go home if i wanted to but I just felt better there. It is a scary thing to leave the hospital, wher eyou are taken care of and monitored and you know that you will be tended to stat if something goes wrong. The bed is comfy too. :)
Thursday am comes and our night with nurse debbie passes and in comes Ed. Ed was a good nurse, don;t get me wrong, but I feel like Ed is the guy they send in when they want you to go home. He took away my morphine button. Or maybe Debbie did... whatever. He crushed up some tylenol for my headache. Liek that is gonna work. I slept for a little longer until he came back, woke me again and asked when I wanted to leave. I said I guess now. Andrea and I got all my papers and stuff and she went to get the car. This very nice orderly saw that I was waiting to be taken down and made sure someone got me - they were making me wait for "wayne" who was doing soemthing else. They were good to me.
We went fromt he hospital to the pharmacy and andrea picked up my scrips. I have to take ursodiol to make sure I don't get gall stones. I take omeprazolam to reduce my stomach acid. and I got a scrip for lortab elixir - liquid vicodin, basically. did i meantion i have 2 refills on that one? :) We gothome and Andrea got me all settled and we turned ont he tv and... I took a nap. There was a lot of that going on. I finally got up the energy to shower. That was a very good thing cuz I was probably pretty ripe at this point. I had to shampoo my hair twice. It didn;t even foam up the first round. Yeah. I was gross. I then got into fresh pjs and my very very comfy bathrobe. Thanks mom. I believe there was more napping and tv. I got some more phone calls and I got to see allison when she got home from work and lisa and jo when they came in from dinner, i think. I was still pretty hazy.
I woke up around 8am, feeling pretty good on friday. my neck hurt from sleeping weird but other than that, I did some dishes and walked around some. It wasn't until around 11 that I started to fall asleep again. It was all good though. Andrea and I hung out, watched the sisterhood of the traveling pants (it kinda sucked) and just hung out as we do so well together. We went to the grocery store in the afternoon so I got out of the house some. It was good for me. Friday night we played trivial pursuit and slept early. I tend to get really tired pretty suddenly so my end of evenings come on pretty quick.
Saturday morning i woke up and felt like a million bucks. My stomahc had been really bloaty since the surgery - i think they put a lot of gas in you to check for leaks and stuff during surgery - and when i woke up saturday i was feeling pretty normal. i had lots of energy and felt chipper. i finally was rid of my caffeine headache entirely. I even slept on my side a little the night before - that was the best! So I showered and got ready to get int he car to come down to LA. My packing startegy was as usual - throw what you can see in a bag. Try to bring pants as well as shirts. I am a simple girl. The drive was uneventful. I took a nap along the way and got to hear andrea sing a little morissey - always good. :) I got to Molly's and have been doing great since.
I honestly feel spectacular. My incision sites hurt some today; probably from sittingint he car yesterday. I went out today withmy hair all done and makeup all pretty. zI wore actual jeans instead of sweats. I am seriously doing great. When I get tired, I rest. I am getting the hang of knowing when I am hungry. That si hard. I have to keep crazy track of water and protein and meds and stuff but andrea made me a great chart in sf and now molly is tracking it all down here. I feel like i am gettig it all in, I just need to keep this going and all will be cool.
I will write more of the emotional side as well as all the details i forgot, as soon as I can. I figured I would use my time now just to oput htis up to let you know the details I had in my head.
Just a thank you to my mom and to andrea for all they did for me. You are both such great caretakers in totally different ways and I couldn't have done this without either of you. You got me to this side. I like this side.
So, I figure I should give the whole story, detail by detail, both to catch all of you up and chronicle it somewhere for the future folk. Here goes:
The last couple days befiore surgery sucked. My mom came up to stay and was so patient with me even though I HAD NOTHING NICE TO SAY AT ALL. (sorry for the caps, stupid button.) Long atory short, I now own a sweet bathrobe and some way cute pjs and my mom obviously loves me cuz she didn;t try to kill me and she is still speaking to me.
The mornign of surgery I got up at 4:45 or so and took a shower and got everything together to go to the hospital; we had to bethere at 6. We made it on time and got to the waiting room and sat for a bit with everyone else who had surgery that morning. The check in nurse, in her irish accent, kept saying "Today's the day!" I think she knew what I was there for cuz I don't think back surgery would have prompted such a wink-and-a-smile treatment.
From the surgical waiting area we went up to pre-op and sat in a curtained room where I had to get naked and wear a beautiful gown. Not hot. We hung out there, my mom and i, for like 20 minutes or so while i insisted we had been forgotten about, repeatedly. My mom read my whole medical chart that they left sitting there so that was slightly entertaining. Finally a nurse came in and put in my IV, i think. The anasthesiologist came by and chatted with me and my surgeon came by, i think. it was way early and i didnlt have coffee so it is a little blurry. I think they gave me a little valium ir something in my iv and to be honest, i don't even remember going into the operating room. I think I pretty much just fell asleep. I slightly remembering them telling me they were gonna out the mask on me and to breathe but that's it. I do remember sayingbye to my mom when they wheeled me away but that was it!
The waking up was... unpleasant. I remember hurting. I remember being whiny and saying "ow" a lot. I remmeber being totally nauseous. I remmber them giving me pain meds and stuff until they finally put a shot directly in me instead of in my IV. I was hurting and it sucked. I sat around in post-op for a while and was in a ndout of conciousness. Finally, right as they were about to take me to my room, my mom snuck in to post-op! She said someone told her a back way to sneak in to see me. It was nice. :)
So my mom went up to my room with me. I actually got a provate room - woo hoo!!! This way my mom could sleep over and I didn;t have to deal with some weird sick person near me. I don't deal well with sharing space. So there we were, the three of us - me, my mom and my morphine button. Let me tell you, I was tappingout melodies on that thing I pushed it so often. I just knew that button equalled better so I just pushed whenever I wanted a change for the better. Wanna sleep? Push. Got pain? Push. Nauseous? Push. Bored? Push. It was freakin' great. I have never been a fan of the opiates (I am a straight up amphetamine girl) but they did their job for me. I don't see a big future in heroin for me though, the morphine was just kinda dull.
The first night there I found out that I apparently stop breathign while I am falling asleep. Apparently I do have sleep apnea. Who knew? So I kept getting woken up by this obnoxious machine that would go of when my blood oxygen went below a certain number. It sucked. My poor mom got woken up by it everytime too - I felt so bad. The night nurse also accused me of drinking tghe water she gave me for my mouth mop (think tiny sponge ont he end of a cocktail straw). To be honest, I was taking in as much as I accidentally could. I was dying of thirst!!!! Youwould be amazed at how helpful something lieka little mouth mop can be when you are totally high and the thirstiest you have ever been in your entire life. I feel like I have been in that position before.
So I had this great nurse, Emely, who took care of me the first day. She was nice and cheery and tolerated me. She was probably my age, too, so it made it easier. In my opiate haze I don't remmeber much. I got some injections in my stomach - blood thinner. I was wicked thirsty for a whole lot of time cuz I wasn;t allowed to drink anything until I did my "swallow test." Sounds way dirtier than it was. They made me drink this disgustingly foul liquid so they could xray me to make sure I didn't have any leaks in side. It was fuckign awful. Truly. I also had t lie flat on my back for it so it really hurt. Luckily, I had my trusty button so I just kept push-push-pushin' away to get through it all. I have seriously never been so thirsty in my life though and if that test allowed me some f'ing water, i would have drank a whole glass. I think the tech who did it was kinda smarmy, too. Reminded me of the slimy dudes in my hebrew class at SMC. The kinda guy who uses his doctor status to get laid. Blech.
So after I finally got back to my room after that test and proceeded to get incredibly nauseous and do some dry heaving off the side of my bed. It was awful. I kept pushing the nurse button and Emely finally came in to give me something to help. It felt so bad, though. It was awful. My mom had gone to run some errands during my test so she was gone, which was fine, but she finally got back and I was just yuck. I was trying to just sleep it all away, I guess. I couldn't keep my eyes open for more than, like, 10 minutes. Andrea was also trying to make her way to the hospital at that time after driving up from LA that morning to take over for my mom so she could go home. Andrea kept getting lost, though, so she kept calling and I felt so bad that she couldn;t find the place cuz the directions were wrong and aaahhh! She did make it though, poor andrea.
My mom left on wednesday afternoon and I was doing ok. I was sleeping a lot but I felt pretty ok. Ok except for the raging caffeine headache I had developed. Let me give a little advice, folks. Don't think the morphine in the hospital can overcome your caffeine headache. It didn;t even make a dent. I was in more pain from the headache than my surgery, by far. It was likehaving a five day migraine. It didn;t go away until Friday and I am dead serious. Morphine didn't take it away. I mean, wtf?!?! That was awful.
So I was gonna go home on Wednesday but I kinda started doing not so hot. I had walked around a few times on Tuesday and they tookt he catheter out on Tuesday afternoon so I was going to the bathroom on my own and stuff. (catheters are way weird, btw. I felt like I had to pee all the time cuz, well, I kinda was, I guess.) I was doing great thogh. I felt good, I was cheerful and alert and stuff. Then came the dreaded cranberry juice incident of '05. Terrible idea. Who knew that 10ccs of watered down juice could make one heave as I did. Poor andrea had flailing, heaving me to look at as she tried to figure out what to do. I hate throwing up, too. It just makes me cry. Nothing reduces me to 7 year old Neely like severe nausea. It passed but so did my whole "I am gonna go home today" idea. We stayed another night. The surgeon had coem to see me and everything and given me my all clear to go home if i wanted to but I just felt better there. It is a scary thing to leave the hospital, wher eyou are taken care of and monitored and you know that you will be tended to stat if something goes wrong. The bed is comfy too. :)
Thursday am comes and our night with nurse debbie passes and in comes Ed. Ed was a good nurse, don;t get me wrong, but I feel like Ed is the guy they send in when they want you to go home. He took away my morphine button. Or maybe Debbie did... whatever. He crushed up some tylenol for my headache. Liek that is gonna work. I slept for a little longer until he came back, woke me again and asked when I wanted to leave. I said I guess now. Andrea and I got all my papers and stuff and she went to get the car. This very nice orderly saw that I was waiting to be taken down and made sure someone got me - they were making me wait for "wayne" who was doing soemthing else. They were good to me.
We went fromt he hospital to the pharmacy and andrea picked up my scrips. I have to take ursodiol to make sure I don't get gall stones. I take omeprazolam to reduce my stomach acid. and I got a scrip for lortab elixir - liquid vicodin, basically. did i meantion i have 2 refills on that one? :) We gothome and Andrea got me all settled and we turned ont he tv and... I took a nap. There was a lot of that going on. I finally got up the energy to shower. That was a very good thing cuz I was probably pretty ripe at this point. I had to shampoo my hair twice. It didn;t even foam up the first round. Yeah. I was gross. I then got into fresh pjs and my very very comfy bathrobe. Thanks mom. I believe there was more napping and tv. I got some more phone calls and I got to see allison when she got home from work and lisa and jo when they came in from dinner, i think. I was still pretty hazy.
I woke up around 8am, feeling pretty good on friday. my neck hurt from sleeping weird but other than that, I did some dishes and walked around some. It wasn't until around 11 that I started to fall asleep again. It was all good though. Andrea and I hung out, watched the sisterhood of the traveling pants (it kinda sucked) and just hung out as we do so well together. We went to the grocery store in the afternoon so I got out of the house some. It was good for me. Friday night we played trivial pursuit and slept early. I tend to get really tired pretty suddenly so my end of evenings come on pretty quick.
Saturday morning i woke up and felt like a million bucks. My stomahc had been really bloaty since the surgery - i think they put a lot of gas in you to check for leaks and stuff during surgery - and when i woke up saturday i was feeling pretty normal. i had lots of energy and felt chipper. i finally was rid of my caffeine headache entirely. I even slept on my side a little the night before - that was the best! So I showered and got ready to get int he car to come down to LA. My packing startegy was as usual - throw what you can see in a bag. Try to bring pants as well as shirts. I am a simple girl. The drive was uneventful. I took a nap along the way and got to hear andrea sing a little morissey - always good. :) I got to Molly's and have been doing great since.
I honestly feel spectacular. My incision sites hurt some today; probably from sittingint he car yesterday. I went out today withmy hair all done and makeup all pretty. zI wore actual jeans instead of sweats. I am seriously doing great. When I get tired, I rest. I am getting the hang of knowing when I am hungry. That si hard. I have to keep crazy track of water and protein and meds and stuff but andrea made me a great chart in sf and now molly is tracking it all down here. I feel like i am gettig it all in, I just need to keep this going and all will be cool.
I will write more of the emotional side as well as all the details i forgot, as soon as I can. I figured I would use my time now just to oput htis up to let you know the details I had in my head.
Just a thank you to my mom and to andrea for all they did for me. You are both such great caretakers in totally different ways and I couldn't have done this without either of you. You got me to this side. I like this side.
posted by Neely at 9:18 PM
3 Comments:
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Hi! I had surgery the same day as you, only on the opposite side of the USA, lol. (I hail from NJ) I found you're blog on the OH site and it's been really great to read some one else's take on this. :-)
Did your doc warn you about the huge amounts of CO2 they use to blow you up in surgery and test for leaks? That may have been where most of your discomfort (lord, who am I kidding? I mean PAIN) came from... I would not have survived the hospital stay if it wasn't for alternating ice packs & a heading pad across my belly. (I still use my heating pad everyday) And I discovered I am allergic to morphine.... the hard way.
They didn't make me do the swallow test since I had a drain. (That was so gross, I hope you didn't have to have one of those)
I'm going to have my staples removed tomorrow (both looking foward to & dreading lol.
Congrats for making it through! Now the REAL adventure begins! :-)
I'm so proud of you. I wish I could have been there to help you too - you are awesome and inspiring and it is no wonder that everyone wants to take care of you :)
I hope I can see you soon...
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