Friday, June 8, 2012

Suck it Karma...


It has been 8 months since my initial surgery but so much has happened between now and then! Let me just say that I have the WORST LUCK EVER. My surgeon has done over 600 surgeries… the same surgery mind you over and over again and he has NEVER had a complication. And so the story continues…

I fully recovered from surgery about 2 ½ weeks after it. I had some "shank wounds" as my sister would call them on my stomach. It looks like someone just stabbed the crap out of me 5 times. I tell people I was in prison and you should see the other guy. I lost maybe 7 pounds within the first 3 weeks and then I started doing water aerobics. Now I love the water and swimming so I love water aerobics but I started having this odd pain… If I would jump or bend weird my port site would have almost a pinching pressure pain. This went on for about a month until one night…

I was in the pool with my friends working out and my port site hurt more than normal. We finished our exercise class and went back to the locker room. I bent over to pick up my gym bag and I felt something give. A horrible shooting pain was at my port site and I could not bend, pick anything up or do anything at all! My friends (god bless them, and sorry for scarring them for life) had to dress me because I could not. They got me into my car and drove me home. One of my friends rushed in the house and got my roommate and they came out and saw me in the car bawling my eyes out. I could not get out of the car to get into my house so they just got in and drove me right to the ER.

We arrive at the ER and my roommate goes inside to tell them what’s up. The orderly’s come outside and ask me if I can move and I said no. They tell my roommate to pull around to the ambulance entrance so that they can help me out of the car and into a wheelchair. So we pull around and they get the door open and are attempting to help me out. I may burn in hellfire for so many swear words that came out of my mouth in the next 2 hours… 2 full grown men had to pretty much lift/shift me into a wheel chair *insert lots of swear words and crying here*.

They got me to the bed I was assigned to and the nurse was asking me questions, where the pain was and things like that. I told her when I had surgery and where the pain was and what not. She called another nurse over to help me change out of my clothes and into a gown. Most painful undressing experience of my LIFE. It was pretty much like ripping of a band-aid really quick… but the band-aid ripped back kind of deal. They tried going slow but that hurt so she said "well we are going to try to just pull off your shirt really fast". Great… FML… Well they got it off and a few choice words later and more orderly’s lifting me into a bed I was laying down.

The pain in my abdomen was very very very painful. I cannot express how much pain I was in. It was the WORST pain I had ever felt in my life. The nurse taking my blood pressure asked me if I had any pre existing conditions or if I took any medication for blood pressure. I looked at her like she was dumb and said no... "Ok well I’m going to try to use a different cuff then because your BP is extremely high right now" "THAT’S BECAUSE I'M IN EXCRUCIATING PAIN!!"

Finally they tossed and IV in me and pumped me full of sister morphine. Oh. Happy. Day. *drool* *pass out* The minute it hit my bp lowered, I stopped crying and all was right in the world… other than the fact I had to hold my abdomen in to make it stop hurting. They took x-rays and pumped me full of drugs and sent me home so I could go see my surgeon the next morning because they were not experienced with Lap Bands and didn’t really know what to look for.

The next morning we hit the road for an hour to go see my surgeon. I can barely walk and I’m very very drugged up. Roommate loads me into a wheel chair and takes me to the 3rd floor where my nurse is waiting to see me. We have a quick chat and my surgeon comes in, pokes around a bit and says "I have no idea what is wrong but this is not normal. I am going to admit you to the hospital here so we can do further testing and possibly surgery to remove your port". Eh? *shakes head* wait what? You want to keep me? Ugh... alright let me call work *ring ring* "hello?" "Hey it’s me... its bad… they are keeping me" "we already got your shifts covered for the week don’t worry about it". It’s surprising how much they can predict these things right?

New hospital room. Different hospital. Different town. Drugs, x-rays, pain, drugs, CT scan, pain, more drugs. Finally after 9 or so hours of tests they figure out that my port site has cut into my abdominal wall and tore it. I have torn my abdominal wall. Da fuq? All from bending over. It apparently does not require surgery, it just has to "work its course" because there is a hematoma under my port site. I asked him about how long. His response, "A month".

November 7th. We make our way back home and work is informed that I will be out for the month. The doctor recommends AT LEAST a month of strict bed rest. I can barely walk to and from the bathroom without passing out from the pain. Almost the entire month of November consisted of me taking my meds, reading, passing out. Rinse and repeat. I don’t watch TV so I read a LOT of books. Every once in a while roommate would make me some food but my diet mostly consisted of water, lemonade and soup.

Thanksgiving rolls around and I am almost back to normal. Minimal pain, I can walk but now I have to wean myself off of the pain meds. I don’t know if any of you have ever had an addiction problem, alcoholism or anything like that but I sure never did. Coming down off these meds after a month straight of being on them was HELL. Constantly shaking, sweating, itching, twitching, can’t sleep, can barely eat, nauseated. Hell. But it had to be done. I was not going to be dependant on these medications for that long of a time because I for one am very against pain medications and the affects they have on your body.

End of February 2012. The pain came back. Crap. *beep beep beep*. I tell my surgeon and he decides just to go ahead and schedule surgery for the next week to move my port to a new location. Same deal as my first surgery except 1 new scar and I got to leave the hospital the same day I went in.

As of now I am down 49 pounds and loving life. I feel so much better, confident and just... well happy. It is slowly coming off, maybe a pound or 2 every couple of weeks and I am fine with that. More to come when I don’t feel so lazy.

Monday, February 6, 2012

So sorry! I havent been on in a while

So sorry that I have not given you any updates or let you know what happened during/after/before surgery! I will try to get it all out ... *deep breath*


Day of surgery had arrived and my driver and I got into the car at 6am to make it to the clinic at 7 (its an hour away). I checked in at the front desk while in my pj's and wrapped up in a blanket that i brought with me :) We proceeded to the surgery center of the clinic and they put me in a room that looks like an er, lots of beds with curtains all around them for privacy, dimly lit. It is the waiting area before they take you to the "other" waiting area before surgery lol. They gowned me up, put some socks on me and scrubbed my stomach with these pads with antibacterial stuff on it. My driver and i waited there for about an hour while they were prepping my operating room.

Then they came to get me. I said goodbye to my driver and they wheeled me into the room right across from the OR. The nurse came in and gave me my IV and pushed some fluids through for a little bit, then the anaesthesiologist came in to go over what he was going to do and have me sign a consent form. Then shortly after that my surgeon came in asking me if i was ready and he had his students with him who were going to be assisting with the surgery.

I'll tell you what its pretty nerve wracking to sit there waiting knowing you are going to be cut open soon! They did last minute preparations and then the nurse (who was extremely pregnant and adorable) came over and put a little something in my IV to help me relax. The last thing I remember was being rolled across the hallway into the operating room. It was stark white with stainless steel things everywhere and quite huge, and lots of people! There must have been 11 nurses/staff waiting in there. They put the mask on me and I was down for the count.

I woke up in a haze, very confused. I knew I had my surgery but I couldn't figure out who was talking to me. The nurse just kept saying "Sarah, its time to wake up" over and over but I did not want to open my eyes. I was not excruciating pain but there definitely was some. The worst part of it was not the incisions but the bloating from the gas they put into your stomach to inflate it. My entire body ached.

They had me hooked up to my 02 sensor and bp cuff, but i was so sleepy. I would hear the 02 sensor alarm going off 'BEEP BEEP BEEP' and the nurse would just casually say 'Sarah i need you to take some deep breaths please'. Apparently I was so tired and in pain when i breathed that i had made my breathing very shallow and my o2 levels were going down. I trained myself that when i heard the 02 sensor going off to take deep breaths because it meant i wasn't breathing very much.

I got rolled into my room and my driverwas there waiting, unfortunately i had to share a room but my roomie was quite nice :) The first day is pretty much a haze. Nurses trying to get me to wake up and take meds, pumping stuff into my IV, taking vitals. I mainly slept. I was having more issues than normal with pain because of the gas they put in. It rises to your shoulders and causes alot of pain in some people. I had tried to attempt to get up to pee but just ended up curling over in pain, clutching the nurse and crying. She was such a sweetheart to me. By night time the grogginess was almost gone. I sat up with my roommate while we watched Monsters Inc. on our TVs and gabbed. She was in for an erupted appendix and had a great sense of humor.

The next morning I was still in quite a bit of pain and we were having troubles finding the right medication for me. I am sensitive to oral pain killers because they make me very very nauseous. A nurse would come in with a couple pills, give them to me... wait a bit then BAM my face would turn pale/green and she would be putting some anti-nausea stuff into my IV. Finally through process of elimination we found some liquid roxicet that seemed to work.

I was in the hospital 7am tuesday and got to leave at 5pm wednesday night. It is a little big longer than normal but they couldn't let me leave without being dependent on ORAL pain killers instead of the IV. I even went for a couple walks (which they require before they let you out, to know you can move around and to get the gas moving around too)