Surgery Post Recap

Okay, feeling a wee bit better and I'm ready for a big ol' post about my surgery. I'm going to try and break it down so its not a novel - here it goes:

Friday: I arrive promptly at Boston Medical Center at 6am with Jeff and my father. 7am I am in the surgery waiting room in a bed in my incredibly flattering johnny and waiting for surgery. The nurses were incredibly nice and one even took my name and number when she found out I was a massage therapist. My surgeon, (I'm shortening his name to Dr. Mac) arrived and chatted with me for a little bit and then comes the BIG PROBLEM. Where, he asks, is my pre-op bloodwork? I have no idea what he's talking about and tell him so. Apparently I was supposed to have some bloodwork done and it wasn't. So here I am on a stretcher and ready to go for surgery and it now looks like it won't happen. What I do need to do though, is give blood. Quite a bit of it too, so they can run some tests. Now the problem with getting blood from me is that 1. I have horrible veins that make most phlebotomists run in fear, and 2. I hadn't eaten or had anything to drink since 9pm the night before. This means that my horrible veins are even MORE horrible and when I tell you that 6 different people tried to take my blood, I am not exaggerating. I was stuck multiple times in multiple ways by multiple people and I was soon in tears. I just cried and sniffled and could NOT seem to stop crying, so the poor surgery people actually called Jeff and my father and had them come down to see me. Finally the *incredibly* nice Anesthesiologist gets the blood they need and that's the last thing I remember.

Later in the day: I wake up in post surgery with an urgent need to pee and apparently try to get up and go. Note to self: post-operation nurses do NOT like it when patients try and get up right after surgery. They made me stay down and I think I whimpered about having to pee for an hour before they let me get up and go. That anesthesia is some serious stuff people, my head was all foggy and it took a CONSIDERABLE effort to fully wake up so I could walk to the bathroom. But I did it. Go me!

Side note: Because of all the delays, 2 hours delay for blood and 4 hours for surgery, Jeff had to make a mad dash to Wakefield to take out Monty. And apparently Boston at rush hour is no fun because it took him over an hour just to get home.

Dinner time: I'm wheeled upstairs to the 7th floor (and oh this is NOT Jeff's day at all since he has a morbid fear of elevators and won't get on them unless threatened with bodily harm. He climbed the 7 flights of stairs instead). My father had the exciting task of sitting with me as I zoned in and out of consciousness until Jeff huffed and puffed his way upstairs. I actually was up and walking around by this point, and able to go to the bathroom myself. My roommate, a sweet elderly woman who I will call "Nervous Nellie" was very impressed. Jeff and my father left sometime around 8pm and I eventually crawled back into bed.

How do I feel: Well, it hurt to swallow and talk due to a tube being down my throat during surgery, and my normally high pitched whine voice has been replaced by a husky Kathleen Turner growl. I also have a very impressive slash across my throat that looks like I ran into Jack the Ripper in the hallways, along with some purple marker. But honestly, the pain is not that bad. Compared to the head pain I'd had earlier in the summer, it's nothing. I asked for tylenol for the pain and found out that while there was an order for morphine for me, there was not an order for tylenol. Weird, huh? Morphine was kind of overkill, so I went without.

That Night: Nervous Nellie was up ALL NIGHT LONG with her television blaring and calling for the nurse. At one point I even walked to the nurses' station for her since they weren't responding fast enough. Thank God for Disovery Shark Week which was on, I was able to sleep while listening to the various points of cage diving with Great Whites Sharks. *Excellent prep work for my upcoming vacation!!*

Next Day: God this is long now so I'll wrap this up. I was at the hospital until 9pm that next night and really, really thinking they wouldn't be letting me go home - when they finally released me. SCORE! I practically danced out of the hospital and Jeff and I were soon driving for Wakefield. It felt SOOOO good to be home and sleeping in my own bed! Long and short of it, surgery sucked, but it went pretty well all things considered, and it's over with! One less thing to worry about in the future!