Recovery Saga

Since Danjerus Kurves asked me to elaborate about my horrific surgical recovery, I'll
tell the story. This might get a little graphic. You've been warned.

The day I was discharged from the hospital, I was ecstatic. I felt good (though a bit sore), I was in a good mood, and was excited to start my recovery. I was staying at my parents' house. I felt fine most of the time, but getting up and sitting down (pretty much ANY bending activity) was a challenge, and it took me a while to do it.

When I laid down to go to bed that first night, I also realized that laying down flat was not an option. That was painful. So I slept in the recliner in the family room, which sucked, because my parents get up to get ready for work (their bedroom is right over the family room) around 4:30. But, after they left, I had the whole quiet house to myself. To sleep. Without any nurses coming in every hour to draw blood, take my temperature, take my blood pressure, give me medication, or look at my incision. The first day was heaven. I think I slept 18 hours that first day back home.

The way the recovery would go, ideally, was, about four days after your discharge, you visit the surgeon, and they remove a few stitches and/or staples. They take a few at a time over the first three or four visits in the three weeks after surgery.

Three days after I got home, I noticed the front of my pants were wet. My incision was draining. Something not completely abnormal, but still something that had to be monitored. So, I had to put towels underneath my binder (a garment that held the abdomen together and kept everything tight) to soak up the fluid that was draining. It got progressively worse over the next week. I developed an infection, and the antibiotics I had to take killed my apetite, and made me feel sick all the time (a fun side note for all you gals out there: EVERY SINGLE TIME I take antibiotics, I get a yeast infection. Good times).

The doctor said as long as the color and smell of the discharge from the incision didn't change, I would be alright. Well, it changed. Big time. I had another infection, and part of my incision had to opened back up, and had to be cleaned out and packed with gauze twice a day. After laughing in the surgeon's face for a half hour when he suggested that I might do it, he made arrangements for a nurse to come to my Mom's house twice a day and do it. While I could look at my incision stapled up, there was no way I wanted to look inside of it. NO FUCKING THANK YOU. That's what medical professionals are for.

I was still taking anti-biotics for the infections I had. I also developed the worst case of constipation EVER, and was hands down the worst pain I think I've ever felt in all of my life. It was so bad in fact, that my parents' neighbors two doors down knew when I had to go to the bathroom. No matter how many of my precious little pain pills I popped, it did nothing for that pain. My doctor gave me something for it, and when it finally did kick in (and boy, did it ever), it was all good again.

When I went back for my next appointment with my surgeon, he looked at my incision, and decided that more of it had to be opened back up. The only part of my incision that didn't have to be re-opened was about two inches on the bottom. Everything else was opened back up, and it was NOT a small wound. He also told me that he was re-admitting me to the hospital, because my incision was so fucked up it needed to be watched 24 hours a day. He also told me that it was not healing on its own properly, and that I would need a wound vac installed to speed it up. This made me completely hysterical. Kay was with me at all of my appointments, and if it wasn't for her being there, I probably would have punched my doctor in the face, because I was so frustrated at what had happened up to this point. I was crying, hysterically, and had to call my Mom and tell her to bring my shit back to the hospital, that I was being admitted immediately. For me, having to go back to the hospital meant that my surgery was not working, and that I had gone through all this for nothing, and was just one more item on the list of proof that nothing goes right for me.

Every bit of wind was taken out of my sails at this point. I felt completely miserable. And alone. I went to my surgeon's support group meetings for two months before my surgery, and I asked about two dozen people how their recoveries went, and every one of them said it went as expected. And here I was, UNexpected.

As my Mom likes to say, I don't do anything half-assed. When something goes wrong for me, it goes ALL THE WAY wrong.

The only plus to going back to the hospital? I was back on the 5th floor, and the lovely and hot Nolan was the first face I saw. He said he saw my chart, but he thought it was a mistake. I said I just couldn't stay away from him, so I found an excuse to come back (see, DK, you can still call me a hoar). I had to go have a bunch of tests done the first night. I found out I had a staph infection. Yay.

I didn't know what the wound vac was, or how it worked, but when the doctor said "installed" I was very nervous. How it works is, it constantly sucks fluid out of the wound, keeping it free from fluid build-up, and making the wound heal much faster than without it.

When Nolan and another nurse came in to hook it up, I couldn't watch. I did NOT want to see my whole incision open. I wasn't too hot on the idea of seeing my insides. I watched him open a package that contained a black sponge, about the size of a dinner plate. He cut it into a few pieces, and started putting the pieces inside my wound. He opened another big sponge, cut it, and put it inside. Then, a big sheet of air-tight super sticky tape was placed over my entire stomach, to make sure no air got into the incision. Two small holes were cut into the tape (technically, it's called drape) over the sponges (which had to fill my entire incision), and a small tube was stuck over the holes, that was connected to a machine. The first time the machine is turned on is very uncomfortable (like extreme nausea), because it sucks ALL the air out of the sponges, so that there's no air in the wound at all. Ouch. I hated that part.

I didn't realize the sponges had to be changed every day. Removing the drape really hurt. But, what was worse, was there was a nerve that was cut during my surgery, and every time someone even breathed by it, it sent the most horrid, stabbing, blinding pain through my entire body. I dreaded midnight, because I knew it was around that time that the nurse was going to change the sponges.

When I was discharged from the hospital, I was taking four different anti-biotics to keep infection away, and was given a portable wound vac that I could have at home. I also had a picc line in my arm (a small tube in an artery in my arm that goes to my chest), because I had to take IV protein for ten hours a day. The home health nurses had to come out every day to change the sponges, so my Mom's spare bedroom looked like a doctor's office. There were medical supplies EVERYWHERE.

The worst part of the portable vac: Every time it sucked fluid out (which was about every two minutes), it sounded like a fart. My family thought it was hilarious. I didn't.

Going anywhere with that thing was embarrassing. It was small-ish, and in a black carrrying case, and I stuffed as much of the tubing down the leg of my pants as I could, so it could almost pass for a purse. But everytime it sucked, people stared at me with disgust. Kay thought it was hilarious. Again, I didn't.

The IV protein and the anti-biotics I was taking made me feel sick all the time. I couldn't eat anything, because if I did, I felt like I was going to throw up. And, with all that was wrong with me, and the fact my stomach was, in effect, OPEN, I was afraid of what throwing up would do to me. My parents blew off my family Thanksgiving (which has never been done), and my Mom made a small chicken and some other things for dinner so that I wouldn't feel bad for having to miss Thanksgiving. I could only take a couple of bites of chicken, then I wanted to puke. It sucked.

And, what's even better, I had a yeast infection. All the fucking time. Woo.

I still had the massive nerve pain every time the nurse came. My favorite home health nurse, Alice, advised me to take more pain pills. I wasn't sure what I should be doing. "Do you feel a buzz after you take it, like after you've had a few drinks?" She asked.

"No. I don't feel anything."

"Hun, if you don't feel anything, you're not taking enough. Take two next time. If two doesn't help, take three."

God bless Alice. Thanks to that handy bit of advice, the visits become much less painful. The down side to that is, that pain killers wipe me out. I am useless for the rest of the day after I take any kind of pain meds. I am in and out of sleep for the whole day, and my head feels like it weighs about a thousand pounds. I don't know how people can take them recreationally. I would be in a coma.

At this point, I had been out of work for 2 months. I was scheduled to be out for six weeks. All I wanted to do was go back to my own apartment. I missed my stuff. And my cats. I wanted to go back to work. I hated being home all day, with nothing to do. But I couldn't go back to work with the wound vac, because it's not exactly professional to be sitting at the front desk with a machine that sounds like you're farting every other minute.

My wound was progressing as expected (finally, something going "as expected"... it was A LOT smaller then when I got re-admitted), and my sponges were being changed every third day instead of every day. I also got to have my picc line taken out, and I was REALLY happy about that. Since I could lay flat for about six hours with no problems, I took the opportunity to go back to my place and finally sleep in my own bed again.

I felt like such a dork for doing it, but I totally cried when I saw my cat Ike. I have had him since he was four weeks old, and he has slept in my bed with me every night. We were never apart for that long (jesus, am I really talking like this about my CAT?!). Seeing his cranky, furry little face (ok, truthfully, there is NOTHING little about this cat) after all that time made me break down. I felt even worse when Jesus Freak, whose bathroom is right next to my bedroom, said she could hear Ike crying every night while I was gone.

I was happy to be back in my own apartment, driving myself in my own car, and not having to depend on someone else to help me. But, I still hated being stuck at home, with this dumb fart machine. All I wanted to do was get back to work, and start using my brain again.

The next time I went to my doctor, I begged to go back to work. The only way I could go back to work was to either wear the wound vac, OR, I could take the vac off and let the rest of my wound (by this time, it was about four inches long, and two inches deep - which is a massive improvement over the 12 inches that were opened back up, and was deep enough to fit the nurses two hands inside) heal by itself. It also meant that given my work schedule, I was going to have to take care of packing the wound myself.

Up until this point, I had not looked at my incision. I wanted no part of it. And that's why I couldn't handle the thought of taking care of it myself. But, when the two nurse practicioners were praising my wound's progress, and it's "beefy bloody" tissue, and "good granulation," I bit the bullet and looked down. And, it didn't gross me out. In fact, I stared at it for about five minutes. I decided that if I could stare at it and not puke everywhere, I could handle packing it with gauze myself.

Thank god, I got to get rid of the fart machine, AND I got to go back to work. Three fucking months later.

About a month after I got back to work, I noticed I was hungry. ALL THE TIME. Even if I ate till I was full, an hour later I felt like I hadn't eaten all day. I immediately panicked, and flipped out, thinking that somehow I had managed to stretch my stomach back out, and make my surgery completely useless. The next time I went to my doctor, she had me lay flat on the table and raise myself up using my stomach muscles. When I did, she noticed something. So she told me to put my hands on my upper abdomen and raise myself up again. When I did, I felt it harden up and distend. A hernea. A big one.

The hernea is normal for people who have my surgery. But, it usually doesn't come this soon, and not as big as the one I have. It also makes everything loose in my stomach, and pretty much nothing stays in my stomach for long, which is why I felt hungry all the damn time. Usually, the hernea becomes uncomfortable around 18-24 months after the first surgery, and the doctor does a hernea repair surgery (he also removes excess stomach skin and does a tummy tuck). Luckily, if it happens 24 months later, you'll have lost pretty much most of your goal weight, so you can maximize the tummy tuck. I am really hoping this fucking thing doesn't start bothering me anytime soon. If it does, it's going to get ugly around here.

Wow. That was really fucking long. If you're still reading this, you deserve some sort of reward. I also tell this story to anyone who thinks I've taken the "easy way out" of losing weight. Nothing about this adventure was easy. Or painless.

But I don't regret any of it.