ChristinaS9476
My RNY in Mexico
Dec 03, 2012
Okay, I’m so sorry it took me this long to get on here and let you all know everything went well. I feel especially bad because I know what kind of stuff went through my morbid head whenever someone didn’t come back after having their surgery. RIP!
And here I did the same thing! Eep! I’m so sorry you guys!
Truth be told, everything went great!
So I’m going to go day by day and tell you exactly what happened for me.
Just a reminder, I went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and my surgeon was Dr. Alejandro Lopez. Our hotel was the Casa Magna Marriott and our hospital was San Javier in Nuevo Vallarta. (FYI: There is a San Javier in Puerto Vallarta, but it’s a little bitty clinic about the size of a CVS that gave me a tight sphincter reaction).
We got into town on Tuesday, so we had a couple days before surgery to enjoy ourselves, which turns out was a great idea. The hotel was BEE-U-TIFUL! We were coming from Louisville, KY where the weather was somewhere between “Brrrr!!!” and “Holy shit, it’s cold!” Needless to say, when we got to Puerto Vallarta, we were very happy to see the 88 degree weather. So the hotel was so beautiful, that I wasn’t even nervous about our surgery.
But alas, the 15th reared its ugly head and my step-mom and I were whisked off to San Javier in Nuevo Vallarta by the patient coordinator, Karen. Karen was new but nice and easy to understand. Her English was pretty good.
As soon as we got there, each patient (my step-mom, myself, and another woman) filled out some paper work and got a remote control for our televisions (the important things first!). Then we waited. Jacci, the other patient, went first, so she went on back. Then after a little more waiting, they told me that because they were taking my gall bladder out they wanted to do my surgery first. Well, that was just fine with me because I am my own worst enemy when it comes to worrying, so I would rather go first and get it over with. So they brought a wheel chair and whisked me to what would be my room for the next three days (It was room 209, if anyone gets that one after me, it’s a pretty good one!).
Well, I thought they were going to be quick about doing the surgery, but first the nurses put in an IV (I’m a hard stick, but they finally got one in, bless their hearts). All the nurses so far spoke decent English. The language gap wasn’t a huge deal, and I don’t speak a lick of Spanish.
They drew a bunch of blood for all the tests, which was just a basic blood panel workup where they tested our blood sugar, cholesterol, etc. And then they did an EKG, did vitals, BP, oxygen, etc. I must have been really nervous because everyone kept telling me to relax. My favorite part was the psychological evaluation. It went something like this:
Nurse: Do you feel alone?
Me: Well, I am alone…
Nurse: No, but do you feel sad?
Me: No, not really.
Nurse: Okay.
Psych Eval: DONE!
Well, I had a good couple hours to wait in my room, then they took me downstairs, had me move from my nice comfy bed to an uncomfortable gurney looking thing where I waited a little longer, getting more and more nervous. There were several people around me just speaking Spanish. Then a woman with bright eye makeup on came up and told me she was the anesthesiologist. I found out later her name was Iris and she is part of Dr. Lopez’s team. She was very charismatic and for some reason put me at ease.
As they wheeled me to the operating room and made me move to an even more uncomfortable gurney, Iris was there and she told me she was starting the anesthesia – a drip, not a mask – and that I would start feeling dizzy.
The last thing I remember is her asking me if I was nervous and me saying yes and then she said it’s time to go to sleep and hummed a lullaby.
I vaguely remember a dream about Chelsea Handler (I was reading her books on this trip), but I thought that was weird because the last time I had surgery I didn’t dream about anything.
Either way, the first thing I heard when I woke up was Iris’s voice telling me I was done. I was laying on my side on the slightly more comfortable recovery gurney. I apparently laid on my side all through recovery and at one point, Iris, whom I guess was watching me, told me my step-mom was there. I assumed she was waiting for her surgery, and so I also assumed that she was nervous, so in an attempt to make her feel better in whatever way I could, I yelled (at least I thought), “Hi Kay-Kay!”
I’m not really sure what kind of anesthesia it was they gave me, but whatever it was it put me in a really good mood. I was even nice to my step-mom’s boyfriend, and I’m never nice to him. Don’t worry about him, he tends to think I’m a bad influence on my step-mom and that we spend to much time together. Not really sure how we can remedy that considering we live and work together, but whatever.
When they brought me into my room and finally let me sleep on my comfy bed, I slept for what I thought was six hours, but it was only about thirty minutes, so I started to get up, but I was a big nauseous. I asked the nurse if I could walk and she said yes, but then when I started dry heaving, she told me no and gave me anti-nausea medication on my IV. So much for that.
I don’t really remember a whole lot of the first night. I kept getting up and I also kept waiting for the gas to start, and I was surprised when it didn’t.
Well, the gas did start the next day, and at first I was able to pass gas safely, but then I got some diarrhea and couldn’t fart without going to the bathroom, for fear of shitting myself, so that was the end of that.
Every time I did get up, I wanted to visit my step-mom. I kept thinking it had been several hours, but it had only been an hour or so. I think I drove the nurses crazy.
I finally got to her room the next morning. My pain over the next few days was kind of high, but nothing that kept me from getting around when I needed to. I had to be careful sitting and standing and bending over because my stomach was a bit sore and I couldn’t sleep on my side because the pain had now set in and I had to sleep on my back, which ended up making my butt sore.
For the next few days, I had trouble walking long distances. The drive back to the hotel was difficult on the cobblestone roads and getting around the hotel was a little hard, but we managed.
Kay and I got our drain out on Monday night, the night before we left Puerto Vallarta. It didn’t hurt at all, but the incision drained a bit more that night and the next night while we were on the plane.
Well, since I’ve written a book, I think I’ll stop. If anyone has questions about something I left out, please ask me anything!
