Recovery

Dec 23, 2010

Today is the 3rd day after surgery and I'm feeling much better, although not 100%.  Surgery day seems surreal.  It seems now like a dream.  I guess my blood pressure was very low for a while and I was in recovery for longer than expected.  I don't remember how I got to my hospital room, but I do remember being in the bed and feeling quite a bit of pressure/pain in my left side and  the bottom of my rib cage, especially in the middle- bottom of my sternum (the middle bone in your chest).  I just kept remembering from others on this website saying "the sooner you get up to walk, the sooner you will feel better" So I asked that I get up.  They helped me get into a chair that was in the room and it felt a little better (this was about the time the family came into the room), but I kept hearing the voice in my head from what I'd read here that I need to get up and walk, so I said, Okay I'm ready to walk.  I was very shaky, but had people around me to support me and I started to walk, and even if i was sore, I felt GREAT.  I knew I was doing exactly what I needed to do to begin recovery with a headstart.  The nurse told me that I was the last of the 3 bariatric surgeries that day and the first to get up and move.  I told her it was thanks to the OH website support group. By the time I got back to my bed, even though I was tired, I felt much much much better.  I took a nap, asked for pain medicine before it was too much.  When I woke up, I tried deep breathing, sipping water (my mouth was extremely dry, in fact that was the reason I felt like going back to my room when I went on my walks and not so much being tired), moving my legs etc.  On my second walk at 10 that evening, I went more than twice as far.  The third time I got up to walk (at 1:30 in the morning- had been sleeping quite a bit and thought since I was awake, that I'd try to walk.  They had taken my cathater(sp?) out at around 6:30 pm and said if I hadn't urninated by 4am, they would need to put it back in again, so I was motivated to walk to get that going again too.  My 1:30 walk was all by myself and I walked twice again as far as the second walk... so farther and farther each time.  When I returned I was able to urinate, even if it was just a little and the nurse was so excited with me.  She said it didn't matter that it was just a little, the issue was that the bladder was waking up.  I kept noting these small goals and it really helped keep me focused and moving forward.   I'm getting a little tired for now, so I will continue my experience up to this point in another blog.  :) Nappy time. :)

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