Recovering...

So...it is Saturday. I am finally up to sitting and blogging about the surgery/hospital experience.
My surgery was Tuesday. I was told to report at 9am..I was there at 8:30am and didn't get called back by the pre-op team until 12:30pm. I was a bit anxious and a tad hungry since I didn't eat past 7:30pm the night before...but there was a patient getting a bypass before me and apparently it took longer than expected.


I had the standard pre-op stuff...the Heparin shot hurt a LOT..I didn't think the nurse was exceptionally rough, but I still have a bruise on my arm from it today. Everything else went as expected. I had the drug in my IV that relaxed me. I made it into the operating room and saw a few people and then I was out. When I woke up in recovery..there was a nice male nurse there taking care of me. Very sweet guy. I had no pain really..and my lips were just a little dry. They took me to my room pretty quickly and in a few minutes they let my mom and my best friend in to see me. I was surprised to see my friend because she was there so early (she was supposed to come much later).


My mom had to leave to go get my things from pre-op and my friend (the only other person who knows that I have had this surgery outside of my immediate family), tells me she is there because my mom called her all freaked out. Turns out they had a significant complication while I was under. They perforated my colon with one of the laproscopic cameras. Yea, it is as scary as it sounds. This happens in 1 out of 5000 laproscopic surgeries....lucky me. So...they had to repair and flush out my colon and then had to make the decision whether or not to implant the realize band. Thankfully the surgeon decided to go ahead and put the band in. I don't know what I would have done if I had this surgery and because of their mistake, I not only had a worse recovery, but also no band! Additionally, my hiatial hernia was a lot larger than they anticipated and it was affected by a significant fat pad on my stomach. They had a tough time manipulating the hernia to fix it. So...my 50 minute procedure lasted almost 2 and a half hours.  I guess when the surgeon came down to explain this to my mother, she felt too upset to come see me alone and asked Kim to come early. (Kim was the one who told me all of this). Kim came and stayed a while which is what I needed.


I was supposed to be discharged the next day by noon...but the doctor's wanted me to stay a little longer so they could watch for infection from the colon repair. At 2pm they told the nurses I would be discharged by 6pm so my mom brought my daughter in to pick me up and while they were on their way the doctor's stopped in to say they decided I had to stay another night for observation because my white blood cell count had not dropped. Lovely...another night in the hospital and more stuff for my mom to freak out about.


Thankfully they took my blood really early the next morning and discharged me and I was out the door by 9am. Not your typical surgical experience, which is why I chose to blog about it since I haven't heard or read about anyone else experiencing this...


My recovery has been hindered because of both the hiatial hernia repair and the colon repair. I had a lot of stuff flushed through my system (gallons of water and a betadine solution). I did have the benefit of  the morphine pump for two days in the hospital, so I didn't really feel pain until I got home. They sent me home with liquid Roxocet, which has worked really well. I am not able to go without it, however. The gas pains finally lessened today and my incisions look really good. I have one that is bruised around it, but all of them are closed well and not too terribly big. I took pictures of my incisions, so as soon as I get them uploaded, I will post for those who like to see that type of thing.


I asked myself, even with the complications, would you do this again? My answer is yes. I would. I am especially glad I got my hernia repaired too. So far I have NO hunger feelings. My stomach does rumble and sounds like it is hungry..but  I believe that is mainly gas moving around. I am taking Gas-X strips to help with that. I am also on a liquid anti-biotic for a week. I am having to force myself to consume stuff. I have to do liquids for three weeks so as not to stress my colon or my band. I have no fill in my band, so I am sure once the swelling goes down I will actually feel hungry, but I am good for now. I was supposed to be off until Wednesday next week, but I am going to see how I feel. I am not going to push it.