Details

This might be a long one.

On Sunday May 16th Carol and I with Dhara drove to Toronto and slept overnight at her mother in law's place (Sheena) in Mississauga. I had to be at the hospital for 10am the next morning for my surgery which was scheduled for noon. We were on time, and I wore a gown that fit nicely but the robe to cover the back end was a little short. LOL. Not TOO short, just not comfortably long. At about 11am after my blood pressure was taken many times to get a good reading (and left a lovely bruise on my left arm) I was led to a reclining chair in order for my IV to be put in. I wasn't nervous or scared of the surgery and I wasn't having any second thoughts. Carol was gracious enough not to ask me if I was still "sure" this was the right thing to do.

At 12:45 the anesthesiologist came and got me and I walked down the hall to the operating room. The room was cold but the blankets were warm and some people with masks introduced themselves to me and I recognized Dr Smith's eyes. They arranged me with arms out and pillows under my head and then told me to breath deeply in an oxygen mask and I did and then I woke up in pain in recovery. They gave me morphine and had already started the gravol so I wouldn't be nauseaus. Carol came in for a minute and I felt like I should try to be more awake for her, but I was just so groggy and painy still that I just wanted to sleep until the pain was gone. After a while I was wheeled to my PRIVATE room (yay!) and Carol was allowed to stay with me.

The rest of the day and into the next I had to use a bed pan when I wanted to pee. That was difficult to overcome psychologically. I had to actually say out loud to myself "It's okay to pee now. It's okay to pee now." before I could relax enough to pee lying down in bed.

I would say the puking started Tuesday afternoon. I had been given my clear soup and diet chemical flavoured jello but not able to eat more than a bite or two. I was drinking sips of water and ice chips, and the first time I puked it was clear and watery. And then it turned brownish blackish and there was so much of it. I was filling two of the buckets they provided at a time. I found the morphine took the nausea away, but no one listened to me about that. They said the morphine caused more nausea. Later I retrospected that the morphine merely calmed my intestines down or sedated them so they didn't have the energy to heave their loads back up my mouth. The doctors did a CT scan on Thursday morning because the throwing up was not stopping, and it showed that where the intestines had been surgically attached, they had healed in a kink and were obstructed. I was scheduled for another surgery to correct the problem that same day. They were not able to accomplish their goal through laproscopic methods and so I ended up with 27 staples from my belly button up about 5". At least there were 27 of them.

That night was horrible. I woke up in the early wee hours of the morning with a stabbing terrible pain in the front of my shoulder. I was hooked up to a morphine clicky thing that I could click every 5 minutes for one little shot of the drug, but morphine wasn't helping this pain. I knew from my research that it was most likely gas from the laproscopic procedure (they fill your abdomen up with air so they can see what they're doing and some can get trapped and is quite painful). I read that gas x strips help. I had brought some but they were ever so far away in my duffle bag and the pain was so debilatating I could not move. I couldn't even move to find my nurses call bell. So I had to yell. I yelled feebly for help several times before Bev the Nurse From Hell came into the room. She argued with me that my shoulder didn't hurt that much because I was using so much of the morphine, and that it wasn't gas in my SHOULDER it must be muscle pain from how I lay during surgery. She sternly told me I was to have nothing by mouth including those strips and then implied that I probably got my bowels obstructed in the first place because I didn't follow the rules. She was mean, rude, and even though I was begging with her for something else because the pain was not going away, she didn't care. She told me to be quiet so the other patients could sleep. And maybe I passed out from pain. No, I wish I had. The next day an anesthesiologist came to see me and she said yes it was most likely gas pain and gave me some IV anti-inflamatory which took the edge off.

The good news was that I felt much better. No more nausea! I was only allowed ice chips, but they were the best friggin tasting things ever. I even had to get Carol to taste them to make sure they were plain, and not sweetened.

To Be Continued.