I Finally Crossed Over!!

Jul 15, 2011

I am officially on the loser's bench!!!!  I had a successful surgery on Tuesday, July 12th at George Washington University Hospital.  My surgeon was Dr. Juliet Lee, who by the way is a phenomenal woman.  The staff at GW handled me with care and compassion from the time I checked in until I was discharged.  

Ok, here are the details.  I really didn't have much pain, believe it or not.   My surgery took much longer than expected because they had trouble getting a tube down my throat because the tissue was very thick.  Other than that the surgery was text book.  I remember be in the pre-surgery area with my friends and the nurse coming in the give me something to relax me.  My friends prayed for me and left.  The next thing I remember is a group of people asking me to scoot over to the operating room table.  I remember doing that and looking to my left and seeing a nurse walking toward me with a syringe to give me something to put me to sleep in my IV .  The next thing I remembered is hearing a flurry of people around me and them calling my name, when I opened my eyes I was in recovery.  Then I saw my best friend walking toward me smiling, saying "It's over".  She told me how long I was in surgery and what happened.   The nurse in recovery checked on me frequently and it took a while for my bed to be ready but by 10:30pm my bed was ready and upstairs I went.  I was got up around midnight and asked to sit in a chair, and around 3am I went for my first walk around the hall.  I walked again almost every three hours.

Over the next three days I continued to walk and on Thursday, I was able to finally have some liquid.  I could not have any liquid including ice chips until Thursday.  I was amazed being the "foodie" that I am how  I just wasn't hungry this was indeed a novel concept for me.  I had a morphine drip that I used occasionally.  Oh yeah, here's the TMI nugget, as soon as I arrived to the hospital on Tuesday, I came on my cycle.  I'm a  48 year old perimenopausal woman who had not had a cycle since Feb 11, why now of all days???  The only pain I had in the hospital was from my cramps!!! Which by the way are horrible and the morphine really helped them.  Now, I was upset set that I didn't have any surgery pain but I did feel like a wimp needing the morphine for cramps.  Anyway, they took me off my IV of Thursday and switched me to Roxicet which is acetaminophen and oxycodone combined.  I had a terrible allergic reaction and broke out in hives.  Just a note, itching is a normal reaction to morphine and roxicet.  So they switched me to Dilaudid which worked fine.

I was discharged on Friday around noon and got home mid afternoon.  I slept a good deal of the day yesterday.  I did eat a little soup and juice.  I woke up around 5:30am this morning. I got up and went to the bathroom, check my JP Drain.  Oh, I forgot to say I came home with a JP Drain which stays in until I see my surgeon in a week.  I check it during the day and record the volume and empty it.  Pretty painless and easy to do.  I got up and went for a short walk up the block and came back.  I got something to drink because it is easy not to eat or drink because you don't have the urge.  I am suppose to get a least 4oz of fluid in every hour.  


Well that's all for now my OH family, thanks for the love and support.  I'm praying for a speedy recovery for everyone out there.

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