Okay, so I left off at my last weigh-in before surgery.
The day of surgery is pretty much a blur. There's a good 6 to 8 hours of time that I don't remember at all. I remember them taking me to my room and me saying that I hurt and I wanted to walk. Everyone thought I was insane. They gave me more drugs and I slept for another 3 or 4 hours. At that time, the nurse came in and I asked to get up and walk. So, she took out my catheter and I took my first walk.
Ahhh! It felt good to get up. When you have laprascopic surgery, they fill your abdomen up with air. They try to push it all back out, but it doesn't all come out. You end up with the air trapped in some places like up by your shoulders. Walking is the only thing that makes it move and eventually go away. That first night all I could have was a couple of ounces of ice chips every few hours. My mouth was very dry, so that ice felt like heaven every time they brought it in.
My room was right over the helicopter pad and there were 8 life flights that night. Every time one came or left, it woke me up. So, I got up and walked some more. Next morning they told me I'd have to stay in the hospital another night due to an elevated white cell count. I wanted to cry, but it was for the best. My husband hung around with me part of the day, then headed home before traffic got bad.
Day 2 meant I was able to have something other than ice. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were all the same. You know those little containers they put salad dressing in at some restaurants? They brought me three of those for each meal. One of chicken broth, one of unsweet tea, and one of sugar free orange jello. I sipped the broth for each meal. I wasn't hungry, but they wanted me to eat to see if I would get nausea. Nope! I was fine.
The most heavenly thing on the tray was a bottle of water! I was very excited to see that after nothing but ice chips. Day 3 rolled around and I was good to go home. Woohoo!!! I asked for a dose of pain medicine before I left because I was concerned about a bumpy car ride home. I probably didn't have to have it, but I figured better safe than sorry.
Really, the physical pain of the surgery and recovery was pretty minimal. I only took pain medicine in the hospital once and then once again for the car ride home. After I got home, I took one dose the first two nights to make sure I could sleep. Then, I was good with liquid Tylenol maybe once or twice per day.
Tomorrow... the clear liquid diet, otherwise known as I will never eat chicken broth again.
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