my surgery adventure

so, I had my surgery on Thursday, March 11. It went pretty smoothly overall, and now I am just trying to recover. A breakdown of my adventure since then:

Wednesday night, before surgery:

• 6:30 PM: eat a "light" dinner of stir fry, and drink as much water as I can since I will be cut off in one hour.
• 7:00 PM: eat some ice cream as a treat.
• 7:15 PM: start panicking because I am already really thirsty, and I'm still drinking water.
• 7:30 PM: ughhhh, mouth feels like the desert already. need to distract myself.
• 7:45-10:00 PM: work on cutting/stamping and assembling invitations; periodically complain about lack of hydration.
• 10:30 PM: finally give in and go to bed - after all, I do have to get up at 6 AM for the surgery.
• 11:00-6 AM: toss and turn, consider running away to avoid surgery, sleep little if at all.

Thursday morning:

• 6 AM: wake up. brush teeth, whine that I cannot actually swallow any liquid even though it can hang out in my mouth for a couple minutes. Wipe off any lotion/etc. as instructed, shuffle into "comfy" sweat pants ensemble for post-surgery. Tell loved ones it was a good life.
• 6:20 AM: arrive at hospital, which is approximately next door to my house. Check-in, pay ridiculous co-pay (although...$100 for a $40k surgery is probably not too shabby, eh?), get escorted to surgery wing. Answer approximately 4000 questions, which I just answered at check-in, and also with the check-in phone nurse the day before.
  
• 6:45 AM: change into sweet gown, cool blue hair net thing, and slipper socks. Plus some kind of leg squeezing contraption so I don't get a blood clot while they cut me up. Nurse hooks up my IV on the first try (miracle with my veins); several comments about how cold my hands are and how the finger scanner won't register my vitals because of it (not the first time this has happened).
  
• 7:00 AM: am apparently looking panicked, as surgeon comes to talk me down from a ledge and tells nurse to give me the sedative, which she calls "like a few shots of tequila."
• 7:00:35 AM: already "drunk" from shot. No longer care what happens.
  
• 7:15 AM: tell Chad bye, wheeled into surgery room. The last thing I remember is them telling me I was too tall for the table and having to adjust it before I could be moved onto it. Then I was out.

The surgery was supposed to be over by 9:30. It didn't end until about 10 because when they started cutting into me, they were having trouble cutting my abs (gross) because apparently they are muscular. Who knew? Also, when they finally got to my gall bladder itself, it was longer than usual, and surrounded by scar tissue from all the attacks/pain I'd been having (of course). So it took some time. When they woke me up from anesthesia around 10:15, I was hyperventilating and outright sobbing. I have no idea why, but the nurse was shaking me and holding my head still and yelling at me to BREATHE.

I finally took a few deep breaths, and immediately passed out. I woke up again at about 10:45 in a recovery room, where they finally gave me some juice, and when I was like "um...pain" they told me I had to eat before they could de-pain me. I choked down 2 crackers (throat was sore from the oxygen tube thing), and they gave me vicodin - I'm sure those 2 saltines made a difference...

Anyway, they let me go around noon, with a bottle of vicodin, which ended up doing NOTHING but make me completely nauseous and dizzy. I got no sleep the first night, and spent that day coming in and out of consciousness and drinking water. I didn't eat anything for a couple of days. I also had a sweet oompa-loompa orange tan from the disinfectant stuff they used in surgery. The next morning, my dad called the surgeon to get a different pain pill (the pain was worse than when I woke up at this point). It worked for awhile, and I got some food down, and got to take a quick shower...but then I immediately threw it all up. Just some friendly advice: vomiting with open surgical wounds on your abdomen is miserable...don't. I spent that night coming in and out, so I at least got a couple hours of sleep, but the nausea...lord.

The next morning, I completely gave up on the pain pills and just took some ibuprofen. Believe it or not, this worked WAY better than either of the hardcore pills I had. I have been doing that ever since, and now that everything is out of my system today (still had nausea yesterday from the remnant meds), I actually managed to eat some toast and part of a Subway sandwich. I also managed to walk around the kitchen some today and take another shower. I am feeling a lot better now, and just need help sitting up/down since I can maneuver with my arms pretty well. I have a post-op appointment next week, but my wounds look good and I haven't had a fever at all, so that is good. I am not allowed to lift anything over 8 pounds for 6 weeks, and I don't have *too* much pain at the incisions, just a lot of swelling. Since I'm otherwise healthy, the surgeon was able to do everything through an umbilical incision, so my belly button area is the worst. I still have the other 3 minor incisions around my abdomen for the laproscopic procedure, but they didn't actually have to open those small incisions so they are healing quickly.

Thanks for the happy thoughts before, and I'm hoping for a speedy recovery! Should have an invite post this week, since I got delayed finishing the RSVPs due to my nausea.