The whole recovery process is not great. It seems to me that it just the whole affair being dragged on and on and on, which is not what I expected. I thought they just would just suck out my gallbladder, throw some band-aids over the holes and off I would go on my merry, healthy way (Yes, Mrs. E, it is a day surgery and done with four incisions using probes and what not! How sci fi, huh?!). I don't think I could have been much more naively optimistic about it had I tried. I am doing fantastic, mind you, it's just the little things. I am still not supposed to pick up my children or exercise, especially the stomach muscles, and let's face it, most of my days, these days, consist of me picking up and putting down my children in various settings which uses what else, but the stomach muscles! Oh well. The doctor did remove my bandages, however, and I am healing nicely, and I went home and promptly re-covered the sites with much more colorful bandages, my daughter's Hello Kitty band-aids. Ah, that's much better!
In other news, I can't seem to find a fun read this summer. Everything I have read, has turned out to be the opposite of the fun summer reads I had been so looking forward to. Right now, I am reading Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson. I have seen the movie before and it seemed interesting enough and so I assumed the book would be good. You know what is said about making assumptions. The entire back cover is blurbs from raves about the book from somewhat reputable review sources. What a crock, if you will excuse me for saying. I am not even half-way yet, so maybe I shouldn't be making a judgement so soon, but am almost to the point of abandoning anything but the tried and true classics. It's amazing how many truly crappy books get published these days. Maybe the book gets better and I am proved wrong, I hope so...
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Coffee and Vicodin
This past Monday, I had to have my gallbladder removed. It was making stones. I don't know why or exactly how that happens, but there you have it.
For years I have had pain that I attributed to gastro-intestinal issues. I would chew down half an industrial size bottle of Tums without any relief and would rock back and forth just praying for the burning to end. It would subside eventually and then I would move on. Recently, I have been thinking that perhaps before I get any older and it becomes too late for things that have gotten too far gone, perhaps I should go see a doctor and have all the little things I have been ignoring for so many years, checked out. This was one of those things. The pain in my abdomen was my gallbladder and in it the stones that had accumulated. Lovely.
I had gone to The General Practitioner who suggested I have an ultrasound to make sure it was what she thought it was (gallstones). It was. She sent me to The Surgeon to see if it warranted removal. The Surgeon did. Just great. Let the complete and utter panic begin. The Surgeon sent me along saying her office would call with all the information. They did. They wanted to fit me in shortly thereafter where someone else had cancelled. I refused. We were just about to leave for our two week road trip and I was, in short, panicked. I needed time to let this sink in. I was going to have surgery. Some person in a white lab coat was going to slice me up and fiddle about in my abdominal cavity and pluck out what had been thus far an essential organ. Fun. I explained our schedule, they settled on the Monday after our return. Okay.
They called me the Thursday before with instructions. I was on the phone listening to the nurse when I started to get dizzy and had to put my head between my knees while saying, "Uh huh." to everything she was saying...
She said, "No jewelry." Of course, I think, "Oh my God, if I die I won't be wearing my wedding ring!" She said I wasn't to wear make-up or powders or scented lotions or use strong scented soaps before arriving bright and early. Okay. So again, if I died, I would be stinky and ugly with nothing identifiable to me or my personality. And I would be cut up sans gallbladder.
Monday morning comes along and I followed instructions for the most part, I did use deodorant, though and I had to at least do my hair to compensate for the lack of make-up and so on and so forth. I arrived and approached the woman at the desk who asks me to fill out forms and I don't recall what she said exactly, but it had something to do with something about me staying at the hospital overnight to which I replied in a slightly loud, panicky voice stating, "I was under the impression, because THE DOCTOR did say, that MOST of her patients are able to go home the DAY of their surgery so I don't want to stay in the hospital over night..." I think she was just asking a routine question to which I may have overreacted. Oh well.
I fill out forms. I wait in a jittery panic along with others listening to Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera drone on and on about absolutely nothing. A comfortingly matronly nurse calls my name. Finally. She ushers me beyond the big double doors that open with a swish over to a curtained cubicle to a hospitalized version of an easy chair. She asks me to sit, she goes through some things with me, gives me more instructions that I only half hear through the rapid beating of my heart, she walks away and returns with a pile of clothes. She was so super sweet and I know she gave me the proper information, but of course, I could not tell you much of what she told me. She walked away and closed the curtains behind her and so of course, I deduce, I am to put on this pile of hospital garb in exchange for my comfy sweats and hoodie that I carefully planned to wear, on purpose. I managed to get on the many different layers of one gown with another gown along with scrub like pants and grippy socks. And then she comes back. As she comes back in and I am sitting there bedecked in my blue, it occurs to me that perhaps I should have paid better attention. I think this because I realize that I, in a subconscious attempt to retain some semblance of ME with me, I left on my under garments.
"Was I supposed to have taken off my underwear, too?!"
She paused a beat too long. It was all the answer I needed.
"Um, I need another moment...."
She graciously gave me a few more moments to get properly attired.
She comes back and gives me a shot in the belly to ensure that I don't get blood clots. Great. Now, I am put in another waiting room with people dressed just like me and now we are watching Regis and Kelly but instead of Regis we get Ashton Kutcher. Sometime people wonder what hell could be like... We are all sitting there biting our fingernails with jiggling legs, one crossed over the other jibber jabbering over the inane chit chat on the television until someone calls my name. Now, if you are at all like me and have ever wondered if your life is just really a huge joke that someone is playing on you, then this moment will make sense. I seem to have a lot of these moments... It was not just someone who called my name, no, it was an insanely handsome man with dazzling white teeth, bright blue eyes and perfect hair. He must have been six feet tall. I was mortified.I must already be dead, because this is NOT my life. This is just too ridiculous. I almost laughed out loud. He was standing there waiting so what else was I supposed to do, but stand up and go to him. He introduced himself. I can't tell you what his name was as I was much too amused. He stuck out his hand with the clipboard of what I am assuming to be all my embarrassing information on it in the other. Etiquette dictates that I take the offered hand. Mine must have felt clammy and possibly wet because I believe it was the right hand fingernails that I had previously been chewing in my nervousness. He began to walk so, again, I assumed I was to follow and I could have sworn he mentioned something about being in the operating room to which in my head, I shrieked, "NOOOOO, DEAR GOD, NOOOO!!!" He brought me to a row of curtained beds to where those who were going in to be operated upon were to be chained and drugged. He left. I saw him walk by once or twice, but I do think my prayers were answered because I was awake when they wheeled me in the operating room and I did NOT see him. WHEW!
So once The Adonis left me at my bed, a slew of people came and went to tell me what was to happen. The Surgeon came and saw how nervous I was and instructed a nurse or whoever to give me a bucket of whatever it is which I am assuming was to calm me down. I don't think they did because when they wheeled me in to the operating room, I will wide awake and coherent. I was making the stupid nervous comments that I do, like, "Wow, so this is what a real operating room looks like." They must have thought that I was already drugged. They moved me over to the table and as I laid back down, there were two huge lights like flying saucers over my head and I may have made another stupid comment about alien abductions and X Files. Wow. I think I may have been drugged and wasn't aware.
Then I woke up in recovery coughing and sputtering saying I couldn't breathe and I needed to spit and that I didn't feel well. I heard what I blindly interpreted as a mocking voice saying, "You just came out of surgery, how do you expect to feel?" So that just annoyed me and I forced myself to wake up and I am aware that I was babbling in a drugged stupor about how just exactly unwell I was feeling. The next few hours are a jumble of mumbled answers to questions and I am fully convinced that I fell asleep mid answer upon the numerous people who were probably assigned to attend to me. I don't know how, but at one point I was brought back to that curtained off cubicle where the first kind woman brought me when I had first arrived. I kept saying that I just wanted to go home. Before they could send me home, they wanted me to eat a cracker and drink some water and they wanted me to pee. I eventually accomplished all of these monumental tasks along with a vomiting episode. Good job, Jenn. They finally helped me pull on my own clothes, scooted me into a wheelchair and rolled me to my mother's car and had me on my way. And I left behind my gallbladder.
So, thanks to The Good Surgeon who saved me from the evils of the organ that turned on me. Thanks to my ever long suffering Mother who was by my side the whole time and can attest to the Greek God-like nurse who first came to get me and also, (and I should NOT be disclosing this) snapped a picture of me per my request before they took me in to the operating room. Who knew they handed out pretty puffy blue party hats to the patients?! Thanks to my Dad for keeping me in the ice cream since my surgery. Thanks finally to my wonderful husband who took care of our children while I was having fun at Winchester Hospital, who walked around with me at all hours of the night this past week when it hurt too much to be flat on the bed and who is just too kind and sweet and wonderful for words. Thanks to my dear, sweet friend who made me one of my favorite meals and one of her specialty desserts. Yes, it takes a lot for one person to have their gallbladder taken out.
So now? Now, I am doing great with my coffee and vicodin...
For years I have had pain that I attributed to gastro-intestinal issues. I would chew down half an industrial size bottle of Tums without any relief and would rock back and forth just praying for the burning to end. It would subside eventually and then I would move on. Recently, I have been thinking that perhaps before I get any older and it becomes too late for things that have gotten too far gone, perhaps I should go see a doctor and have all the little things I have been ignoring for so many years, checked out. This was one of those things. The pain in my abdomen was my gallbladder and in it the stones that had accumulated. Lovely.
I had gone to The General Practitioner who suggested I have an ultrasound to make sure it was what she thought it was (gallstones). It was. She sent me to The Surgeon to see if it warranted removal. The Surgeon did. Just great. Let the complete and utter panic begin. The Surgeon sent me along saying her office would call with all the information. They did. They wanted to fit me in shortly thereafter where someone else had cancelled. I refused. We were just about to leave for our two week road trip and I was, in short, panicked. I needed time to let this sink in. I was going to have surgery. Some person in a white lab coat was going to slice me up and fiddle about in my abdominal cavity and pluck out what had been thus far an essential organ. Fun. I explained our schedule, they settled on the Monday after our return. Okay.
They called me the Thursday before with instructions. I was on the phone listening to the nurse when I started to get dizzy and had to put my head between my knees while saying, "Uh huh." to everything she was saying...
She said, "No jewelry." Of course, I think, "Oh my God, if I die I won't be wearing my wedding ring!" She said I wasn't to wear make-up or powders or scented lotions or use strong scented soaps before arriving bright and early. Okay. So again, if I died, I would be stinky and ugly with nothing identifiable to me or my personality. And I would be cut up sans gallbladder.
Monday morning comes along and I followed instructions for the most part, I did use deodorant, though and I had to at least do my hair to compensate for the lack of make-up and so on and so forth. I arrived and approached the woman at the desk who asks me to fill out forms and I don't recall what she said exactly, but it had something to do with something about me staying at the hospital overnight to which I replied in a slightly loud, panicky voice stating, "I was under the impression, because THE DOCTOR did say, that MOST of her patients are able to go home the DAY of their surgery so I don't want to stay in the hospital over night..." I think she was just asking a routine question to which I may have overreacted. Oh well.
I fill out forms. I wait in a jittery panic along with others listening to Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera drone on and on about absolutely nothing. A comfortingly matronly nurse calls my name. Finally. She ushers me beyond the big double doors that open with a swish over to a curtained cubicle to a hospitalized version of an easy chair. She asks me to sit, she goes through some things with me, gives me more instructions that I only half hear through the rapid beating of my heart, she walks away and returns with a pile of clothes. She was so super sweet and I know she gave me the proper information, but of course, I could not tell you much of what she told me. She walked away and closed the curtains behind her and so of course, I deduce, I am to put on this pile of hospital garb in exchange for my comfy sweats and hoodie that I carefully planned to wear, on purpose. I managed to get on the many different layers of one gown with another gown along with scrub like pants and grippy socks. And then she comes back. As she comes back in and I am sitting there bedecked in my blue, it occurs to me that perhaps I should have paid better attention. I think this because I realize that I, in a subconscious attempt to retain some semblance of ME with me, I left on my under garments.
"Was I supposed to have taken off my underwear, too?!"
She paused a beat too long. It was all the answer I needed.
"Um, I need another moment...."
She graciously gave me a few more moments to get properly attired.
She comes back and gives me a shot in the belly to ensure that I don't get blood clots. Great. Now, I am put in another waiting room with people dressed just like me and now we are watching Regis and Kelly but instead of Regis we get Ashton Kutcher. Sometime people wonder what hell could be like... We are all sitting there biting our fingernails with jiggling legs, one crossed over the other jibber jabbering over the inane chit chat on the television until someone calls my name. Now, if you are at all like me and have ever wondered if your life is just really a huge joke that someone is playing on you, then this moment will make sense. I seem to have a lot of these moments... It was not just someone who called my name, no, it was an insanely handsome man with dazzling white teeth, bright blue eyes and perfect hair. He must have been six feet tall. I was mortified.I must already be dead, because this is NOT my life. This is just too ridiculous. I almost laughed out loud. He was standing there waiting so what else was I supposed to do, but stand up and go to him. He introduced himself. I can't tell you what his name was as I was much too amused. He stuck out his hand with the clipboard of what I am assuming to be all my embarrassing information on it in the other. Etiquette dictates that I take the offered hand. Mine must have felt clammy and possibly wet because I believe it was the right hand fingernails that I had previously been chewing in my nervousness. He began to walk so, again, I assumed I was to follow and I could have sworn he mentioned something about being in the operating room to which in my head, I shrieked, "NOOOOO, DEAR GOD, NOOOO!!!" He brought me to a row of curtained beds to where those who were going in to be operated upon were to be chained and drugged. He left. I saw him walk by once or twice, but I do think my prayers were answered because I was awake when they wheeled me in the operating room and I did NOT see him. WHEW!
So once The Adonis left me at my bed, a slew of people came and went to tell me what was to happen. The Surgeon came and saw how nervous I was and instructed a nurse or whoever to give me a bucket of whatever it is which I am assuming was to calm me down. I don't think they did because when they wheeled me in to the operating room, I will wide awake and coherent. I was making the stupid nervous comments that I do, like, "Wow, so this is what a real operating room looks like." They must have thought that I was already drugged. They moved me over to the table and as I laid back down, there were two huge lights like flying saucers over my head and I may have made another stupid comment about alien abductions and X Files. Wow. I think I may have been drugged and wasn't aware.
Then I woke up in recovery coughing and sputtering saying I couldn't breathe and I needed to spit and that I didn't feel well. I heard what I blindly interpreted as a mocking voice saying, "You just came out of surgery, how do you expect to feel?" So that just annoyed me and I forced myself to wake up and I am aware that I was babbling in a drugged stupor about how just exactly unwell I was feeling. The next few hours are a jumble of mumbled answers to questions and I am fully convinced that I fell asleep mid answer upon the numerous people who were probably assigned to attend to me. I don't know how, but at one point I was brought back to that curtained off cubicle where the first kind woman brought me when I had first arrived. I kept saying that I just wanted to go home. Before they could send me home, they wanted me to eat a cracker and drink some water and they wanted me to pee. I eventually accomplished all of these monumental tasks along with a vomiting episode. Good job, Jenn. They finally helped me pull on my own clothes, scooted me into a wheelchair and rolled me to my mother's car and had me on my way. And I left behind my gallbladder.
So, thanks to The Good Surgeon who saved me from the evils of the organ that turned on me. Thanks to my ever long suffering Mother who was by my side the whole time and can attest to the Greek God-like nurse who first came to get me and also, (and I should NOT be disclosing this) snapped a picture of me per my request before they took me in to the operating room. Who knew they handed out pretty puffy blue party hats to the patients?! Thanks to my Dad for keeping me in the ice cream since my surgery. Thanks finally to my wonderful husband who took care of our children while I was having fun at Winchester Hospital, who walked around with me at all hours of the night this past week when it hurt too much to be flat on the bed and who is just too kind and sweet and wonderful for words. Thanks to my dear, sweet friend who made me one of my favorite meals and one of her specialty desserts. Yes, it takes a lot for one person to have their gallbladder taken out.
So now? Now, I am doing great with my coffee and vicodin...
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