Home from Surgery
I'm home after a smooth and successful surgery. I am lucky that the people at the hospital I went to (Evanston Northwestern) were delightful and very service oriented from start to finish. That made a big difference. They get an A+
I checked in yesterday, did the pre-op, said good-bye to Mom. Went into the prep room, got the IV, talked to the anesteaologist, saw my surgeons team, got marked up and off I went. Talked to everyone in the OR, got onto the table and pulled forward all my loose skin. I vaguely remember waking up. And this lovely woman Bonnie who kept me for 2 hours afterwards, in a wonderful state of bliss. My body was numb, I was a bit sleepy but overall all the pain meds did not fog up my head at all. Hence, when I got to my room and my mom left, I spent hours on my blackberry and phone.......
Morphine was lovely. I got some every 4 hours but at 3.5 hours it seemed to wear off and I had horrible abdominal pain. After a few rounds we determined it was gas as I'd not had a BM that morning. And I was quite pissed that my record said nothing orally - I was flipping HUNGRY and had even talked with the PA about a little dinner. All i got were ice chips and a sucky sponge.
At 2:30am I threw a fit, ya'll know I cant sleep when I dont get protein. I had a headache, was not sleeping, pain and the room was really hot. Plus I was next to this machine that was very noisy as well as the staff breakroom where they continually slammed the door. My lovely nurse called my secondary surgeon and got approval for me to drink one of my profect - never leave home without.....That calmed the beast, got my system moving so I could toot and finally....a few hours of morphine induced sleep.
When the secondary surgeon came around at 7am I was - ummm, highly upset and a bit rude about the food thing and told him he knew nothing about WLS if he let someone go without food or water for 30 hours. He was upset and let me have another profect. The PA and surgeon came in shortly thereafter. My surgeon is such a charmer, kept calling me Ms America. Ends up I was a big bleeder and they were concerned I'd need more work, hence the hold on food and water. I wish they'd told me. He said I had a completely flat abdomen which had taken a bit of rough work but I would be one hot chick and the men would be chasing me. LOL.
From there I said I wanted to go home and we started wrapping up everything. Cathether came out, I got food (sooo not a WLS diet and then they yelled at me for not eating enough), bought two binders (which took forever), learned how to work the softball size drains coming off each hip. And waited.....for the binder and then a wheelchair. At this point I was so tired of waiting, that hot room and being there that I walked out to the car on my own, with Mom.
I am home now and going to take a big snooze. I am sore but not dying or in pain, although there is still hospital pain killers going thru me and I just popped a Darvacet. I have tight bandages all around my hip/tummy and the upper part of my (shaved) kootch. The spot near one of the drains hurts a bit. I walk bent over like an old lady and must sit/lay in a reclined position. Supposedly I have an incision from hip to hip but I dont feel it. The most sore part is right under my rib cage, he says he scraped fat from there and pulled down all the skin over the mesh used to repair the hernia. I have my original belly button but not deep like it was. I'll see it all on Friday.
At check in I weighed 191 (gasp) and the same just now. He would not say how much the skin weighed, I guess 10 lbs so we'll see how the numbers go in the coming weeks.
I have to wear the binder for 3 months.
That's just about it. Thank you all for the text messages and posts. I thought of all of you and what we've been through. Ya'll mean a lot to me.
Time for a nap.....
~Tiffany 
Ronna 
Karyn 
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