Friday... 4 days after surgery -- UPDATE!

Jul 31, 2009

Here's a (very long!) account of the past few days so people can see and also so I can remember how it was :P

Monday (Surgery day)- I went to the hospital... got there a half hour before I needed to. I talked to a couple ladies in the waiting room. One was there with her WLS friend and she was scheduled to have surgery around the same time as me at noon. Her name was Jackie, really nice lady. The other woman was waiting for news of her husband who went in for a lap band, She's scheduled for a RNY in a couple weeks . I also ironically met a woman (Kimberly) coming in for her pre-op appointments who i'd met the day I decided I wanted surgery at the support group meeting I went to. :) At 10:30 or so I went into the room to get my gown on and wipe myself down witht he anti-bacterial stuff some more. I put all my clothes in a bag and got settled on the gurney. I got this weird inflated plastic quilt that had warm air running through it to put over me some little paper booties and a hair net thing for my hair. I also got a little needle to numb me at the Iv place and when they put the IV in my arm I didn't feel a thing. Very cool! They taped it down as well and gave me a couple meds in my IV... one for nausea... I forget what the other one was for and then they let my boyfriend and mom come in to visit with me before they wheeled me away. I read my book for a little while while i waited then at about 11 Dr. Chin surprised me and came in and asked if i was ready to go so i said yes I waited a little bit and then after a few minutes they wheeled me into the Or. They had me scoot myself onto a different table, then they had me put my arms out perpendicular to my side and strapped them down loosely and strapped my legs down too. They told me they were putting something in my IV to make me go to sleep and I said Ok...I watched them for a short time getting the surgical stuff together around the room and then I was out, cause I can't remember a single thing from that point on till I woke up.. no dreams or anything :P I remember fading in a little to a room where a woman was watching me intently writing down stuff on a piece of paper as she sat. IK guess I must have been in the recovery room. The woman was probably looking for alertnes. I tried opening my eyes but they closed very easily. I became more alert eventually and I guess I must have been wheeled into my hospital room soon after. I got to be in my own room thankfully :) Soon after, my boyfriend and mom came to see me and I saw them intermittantly through bouts of closed-eyedness... hehe. I was sleeping sometimes but most of the time my eyes were just too heavy. I could still talk to people with my eyes closed okay though :) The nurses introduced themselves and put their names and numbers on my whiteboard, and I slept a bit and stuff while my mom and boyfriend entertained themselves witht he movies on the TV and computers and games and such. I didn't get to walk too much beyond that except to go to the bathroom. I peed a lot that night though because of the IV fluids. It came in spurts which was odd but apparently normal. That night was much like the daytime where I was in and out of sleep. It went okay though. no liquids at all but they let me rinse my mouth out with a cup of water and spit it out. That helped a lot.

Tuesday (day after surgery): I woke up in the morning and dozed while i watched/listened to movies for a little while. Then I asked about being able to drink and they checked the records and said that I could. They brought me a tub with some ice and water bottles, and some jello and apple juice and a cup of warm broth throughout the rest of the day. My throat was sore and my tummy was still tender so it was hard for me at first. I was afraid of being too full and throwing up or something.  They told me one ounce every 15 minutes, but I slept so much it was hard to keep it up and so I didn't drink too much that day. I was also taken off of my pain pumo that day and told to try and just use this drinkable liquid pain medicine instead caus thet's what I'll be using at home. The nurses kept asking me that day if I had burped or passed gas yet but i didn't start burping till that night, though I burped a lot that night. I kept walking and my boyfriend helped me by pushing my IV cause he was more available than the nurses. I walked a couple times to visit my friend I had  in the room down the hall. Later that night I was just sitting doing nothing but I had a good deal of pain and it wasn't time yet for a new dose of the liquid pain meds (4 hours) so I had to get an injection of something more powerult but that coupld be taken sooner.

Wednesday (2 days after surgery): Dr Chin came in in the morning and said as long as I could do without the injectable pain meds till 3pm I could go home then.... buuut i didn't last that long. I had another instance of the pain meds wearing off early and lots of pain even though I wasn't moving around at all. Sooo they gave me another injectable and had me stay an extra night. Wednesday night I took the liquid pain meds at 9: 30 and didn't need them again till 6am or so the next morning so that was really good. I walked a lot more wednesday. They removed my IV bag completely so I was able to go for a walk alone in the morning which was good. I got to eat some different things. i had some pudding and some custard and yogurt too. I also had some milk. I was allowed to drink an ounce every 5 minutes so I did better with the liquids in my waking hours than I had before. I never did try the high protein jello because it smelled like cough syrup... hehe. Everything went down just fine. I didn't have any problems with things going down and I burped plenty. My boyfriend stayed late with me that night he thought of spending the night but they didn't have any free beds and I didn't want him having a bad night just sleeping on chairs. It ended up being fine because I slept pretty well that night and I didn't need him to bug the nurses to give me pain meds.

Thursday:
I woke up at like 5 am and actally watched an entire movie coherantly before I took a nap. I got up and took a walk by myself that morning too. Then at like 10 am or so the doctor came in and took a look at me and asked me how my pain was and i said fine... so he released me and let me go home :) II called my mom to come pick me up and my boyfriend to come help carry my stuff away to the car. I took a pillow in the car to pad the seatbelt and mom was sympathetic and drove pretty slowly and carefully for me so it wasn't too bad. When I got in the house mom mixed me up a 42 gram protein bullet and water in a 32 oz jug and I sipped that through the day. My boyfriend downloaded me a repeating timer for my computer called Secs that will go as long as I want it to beeping every 3 minutes so that I will take a sip with each beep. I finished the whole 32 oz. on top of the fluid I'd had at the hospital and I also finished half of a high protein soup. that day. I took a small nap as well and slept pretty well through the night.

Friday: I was mostly sitting for a while and then taking a walk around the house to get something. My pain was well managed by the liquid meds and I was quite alert enough to post and read an watch TV comfortably without missing much. I'm not going anyplace soon though cause the car is uncomfortable enough to avoid for a while. There's construction at my house right now so i'm going to have to move to the living room occasionally so they can work on my room.

Other notes: My teeth chattered a lot the first couple days in the hospital. I was cold but I didn't know it really as I wasn't myself. I also wore little socks on my feet all the time the first couple days which is something I don't normally like when I sleep. I started taking them off later in my stay. I also was bad with my walking in the sense that I didn't stand up straight enough. my back was bent as I walked and it's hurt now because of it. At the time I was worried about my incisions hurting from my belly stretching when it was straight but now I wish I had thought more of my back at the time.

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