:o) THANKS AND HUGS! :o)

Hello, I want to thank all of you who have been such a warm and wonderful support to me through this process. Thanks for being there..thanks for listening..thanks for enduring. I really appreciate all of you who have taken time out from your busy day to sign my page. This is one of the biggest leaps of Faith I have ever taken in my whole life, and I could not have done it withought this board and AMOS in general. I would like to thank Heidi for volunteering to be my local Angel...and an Angel she is! BIG HUGS Heidi! (I will try not to be too much of a pain in the arse!)..I look forward to walking the trails with you soon! I also want to thank Connie for taking me on as my "national Angel" on the main board...HUGS..I have learned so much from you both and really enjoy getting to know you as people. You both ROCK! My surgery is on the 19th...(gulp)...next Wednesday....it once seemed so far away....and now the days are FLYING!!! It looks like I will be the second surgery that morning..I don't have a set time yet..can you believe I won't know until Tuesday night? I also have to do the bowel prep thingy and drink the "YUK Juice"...so for those of you who have thought I was "full of it"..that willl be changing shortly! (At least temporarily....).... Off to Wal-Mart I go..to get my sexy recovery outfits.......BIG sweatshirts and BIGGG sweat pants!! My Doc let me get my pain script early so I won't have to worry about it on the way honme...he gave me that liquid Lortab stuff..is that any good? I also know I won't have the pump in the hospital..but morphine shots and that scolamine patch for nausea....he says he likes to monitor pain more closely than the pump allows? (Go figure!) He says to expect the left side to "really hurt"...oh goody! I was hoping to have the pump...I always did on 2 other surgeries...oh well...(gave me the illusion of control).... Oh my goodness! I can't believe I am really doing this! But alas I am...and I really believe it to be the right thing for me to do....no matter what! Thanks to ALL of you!!! Feel free to send any tips or thoughts/suggestions ..you might have! Again.. THanks Heidi! Sher'

Hi Sher I did not wear my bathrobe when I was in the hospital. I wore Johnny robe andused my slippers to walk alot around the nurse station. Buy Prepay phone card so you can call your friends or family while you are at hospital. Good Luck and will thinking of you on 19th. Kathy K

Thanks Kathy, I would not have thought about the phone card...I am racing around here trying to get everything ready. Thanks so much for your good wishes! Sher'

Hi, Sher'! Besides the phone card and slippers that Kathy already mentioned, I found three other items to be indispensable. The 1st is lip balm (Chapstick, Vaseline, etc.). Middlesex Hospital gives you one, but not all hospitals do. When you're not drinking and then advancing to not drinking much, your lips get very dry and chapped. The one the hospital gave me was by Vaseline and it was cherry flavored. It tasted really good when I put it on! The 2nd item is a back scratcher. I got a cheap one at Walgreen's for $1.50 (on sale from $1.99). I don't think I ever actually used it to scratch anything, but it was very useful for sliding things over on the table to where I could reach them without having to stretch, which hurt too much at 1st. (Never mind stretching, it hurt too much to clear my throat when I woke up in my room after surgery. You don't realize before surgery how much your stomach and abdominal muscles are used for just about everything you do.) The 3rd item depends on whether or not your doctor has you wear a binder. Dr. Aranow has his patients wear one for about 2 wks. after surgery. I remembered that Kathy had suggested getting a big T-shirt to wear under the binder so that the binder wouldn't be right against your skin and irritate you. Because I'm always warm in hospitals, I bought a camisole instead that had spaghetti straps (closest thing to pasta nowadays ). It was a polyester blend and had no lace, so it felt nice and smooth against my skin under the binder. I can't take credit for any of these suggestions because they're all ones that I read on this board (or the main board) in the months before my surgery, but they helped me so I thought I'd pass them along to you. Good luck Wednesday! Debby

Hi Debby, Thanks so much for the tips..and I will be making a list..because I seem to be very airheaded these days! I know we must use our stomach muscles for SOMETHING..but the way mine hangs there now..it seems more like a tumor!!!( Belly..your days are NUMBERED!...)...I am anticpating being full of aches and pains...but hoping not..I am having Lap..and some sound like theirs was quite seamless...but my Doc mentioned I might have bruising and of course I just HAD to read a main board post about bruising that was so bad the girl had a low hermatocrit..her Doc must have used a car jack! OWEE!!! On the other hand..I have had folks talk about being back to WORK in 4 or 5 days! ;shrug:???? Thanks for passing the tips along and for taking the time to write to me. I really appreciate it! Hugs, Sher'