~ 9 days post op ~

Nov 16, 2010

Well, my apologies for not writing sooner... when I was told the first week was hell I wasn't expecting to go through that. I arrived on Monday Nov. 8th at 7:30 am for my surgery. At 9:00 am I was still waiting to go into the Operating room. Surgery went fine... Unfortunately, I had a lot of bleeding in one of the incisions which required some deep sutures. This led to extra pain (more than you would imagine by just reading the words). In recovery, I learned something - I have my first drug allergy ! LOL... I know, not the best thing to learn in recovery but apparently I was allergic to a pain medication which they administered to me twice which gave me a nasty reaction. That extended my time in recovery and was finally in my room and awake/coherent at approximately 5:30 pm on Monday afternoon. I was able to get up and take a walk at 6:30 pm (quick huh?) and then had the most interrupted sleep of my life. Between the shift changes and the medication, it was annoying, but I had my lucky push button for morphine and loved every bit of it.

Tuesday was fine, I felt better, and my morphine button was still getting use. They released me early (I was scheduled to stay until Wednesday) but the doctor released me on Tuesday at about 6pm. Got home and after sleeping a good night, woke up Wednesday in more pain. Tylenol w/ codine was not working and only subsided the pain for a short while. After dealing wtih that for most of the day, I was eventually taken to the ER late Wed. night. We stayed until about 1am on Thursday and was released. Apparently the deep sutures cause a lot of pain and discomfort and they couldnt give me anything stronger than the tylenol w/ codine. BUMMER !

So Thursday I spent in bed sleeping, walking very little. I was lucky enough to have a great ER doc who pumped me full of morphine before I left and I had a great night's sleep on Wednesday night which lasted into Thursday mid-morning. For some reason I still wasn't feeling well... and at 4:30 am, woke up with a swollen tongue and throat... I called Kaiser - nothing they could do until the appointment nurse came in at 6:30 am, so I hopped online, scheduled an appt. w/ my doc for 8:20 am on Friday (about 4 hours away which was amazing)... and then arrived at the medical center again. Doctor lectured me that it was all viral but I knew something else was going on. He took a strep throat culture "just in case" and it wasnt until 4:30 pm that I got the call that it was positive.. So on top of trying to heal my body was fighting an infection, which explained the nasty fever I had for many days.

Now, here I am, 9 days post op. Took all of my anti-biotics (liquid version of course which are disgusting)... feeling great.. up and walking around and even had the energy today to walk for an hour and forty-five minutes straight, no resting. I am a bit sore after doing that, but the exercise gave me energy and now I can't sleep. (go figure).

Oh, and the kicker is that I finally figured out why my scale has been acting weird - its broken... So Its hard for me to know what my weight loss is since the day of surgery... When I went to my pre-op class at Kaiser I was 275.4. That was on 10/26 and I had my surgery on 11/8. I believe I did lose about 4 lbs in between my surgery date and the pre-op class, so I estimate my weight prior to surgery (because they dont weigh you so its hard to know)... was about 271. Today, 9 days post op I got on the scale and i'm at 254.7... so roughly 16/17 lbs so far. The sad part: my clothes dont feel any different and I dont feel any different. Hopefully that'll change soon.

I love it - i'm not hungry... Although I want to start eating more than creamed soup, jello, and yogurt. The protein shakes take me about 2 hours to eat. They are hard to get down but i'm proud of myself that they're going down and i'm getting the nutrients I need.

Friday is my Post-op appointment. Can't wait :) I'll keep you all posted...

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