Post-Surgery (Hours)

This is where it is all fuzzy from the anesthesia and the pain meds.

I remember waking up in recovery. I see a male nurse's back standing at a large countertop in the middle of the open room. I seem to be the only patient in here. I recall realizing I was in so much pain. An intense aching everywhere from my lower ribs down to my hips.

I tried calling out to him but I can't talk, I can't make any noise from my throat. Thinking back now, I'm unaware if I'm intubated still. I suspect I wasn't, I think the reason I couldn't speak was because my throat was so sore from the tube. But I had no issue talking later when I get to my room, you'll see that real soon haha.

The pain is so bad that I need that nurse over here right now to remedy this. So I start banging my fists on the metal bars that protect me from rolling out of the bed. Next thing I remember is someone quieting my fists and saying something about how he's going to help me, just relax.

Next thing I remember is being in my hospital room with my mother, my husband, and my best friend around me. A female nurse came in to check on me, and I remember saying something that made everyone laugh, and she pats my thigh and says, "You are such a trooper." I remember lifting my arms up in front of me, seeing all the wires still attached and saying in a robot-voice, "I am a storm trooper."

If you have never seen the skit of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at the Star Wars convention from when Conan hosted Late Night, you need to crawl out from under the rock you've been living under and watch it. I've made it really easy for you and here is a link. So that's what that phrase is from.

So my memory is still fuzzy, and my husband says he wishes he recorded more of it, because I remember saying things like, "I'm gonna shoot poop at you from my poop hole." MY best friend Jessica told me she was laughing so hard at the things I was saying she couldn't breathe. The short video my husband did record, I was complaining about "stupid invites to stupid events" on Facebook. My husband tells me that everyone's been asking about how I was doing, and I said, "Yeah everyone must think I died, it took so damn long."

I kept saying that the nurses just, "dumped me here" and wanted to know when I could start pressing my pain pump button. I would like to point out that in no way did the nurses just dump me there, and I was in no pain at all. I think I was just bored and wanted something to do, like push a pain pump button.

Here I am in a nice dilaudid-induced high. I didn't need any oxygen, but as long as I was on the pain pump, I had to keep those things in my nose so it could sense that I was breathing fine. It would beep every time it fell out.

My next post will cover changing my bag for the first time before leaving the hospital. My surgeon (as most surgeons do) had four requirements before I could leave.
1. I could walk on my own without any serious pain.
2. I had passed something besides minimal blood through my stoma
3. I was able to eat without issue.
4. I was comfortable changing my bag.

I met all four requirements by day four and was hope by dinnertime on day 4 :-)!

My Surgery

Life has been quite busy, which is a good thing.

I had my total colectomy on December 2, 2013. Surprisingly, once I made the decision to just do it, I wasn't all that nervous about it. I am the type of person to just commit to something and make it work. The decision process is the hardest part for me. 

After I met my surgeon, Dr. Stein at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia, I was put at as much ease as one could expect preparing for such a huge surgery. He really is an amazing guy, and has only proved more so in the days, weeks and months since my surgery.

So I prepped for the surgery as most people do from what I have researched. I did some pre-op testing a week before the surgery date. There they just took some blood, went over my medical history, and took a pregnancy test. I didn't even see my surgeon but it was a nice, calm introduction to the hospital. Everyone was SO nice. 

I am always so happy, and amazed when hospital staff-persons are incredibly nice. I had such a bad experience my first time as a patient in a hospital (when I was first diagnosed), that I always anticipate mean nurses and doctors with terrible bedside manner. Every single person I encountered through this experience was as kind as I could have hoped for.

Conveniently, the week leading up to surgery (which was on a Monday) was Thanksgiving Thursday, followed by my birthday on Saturday. So my birthday dinner ended up being what I dubbed my "Last Supper." It was nice because it was another excuse for people to come see me and give me gifts before surgery, and to also treat myself to the meal I eat every year for birthday: PIZZA HUT. 

Prep for the surgery was just like any other prep I have done for a colonoscopy. I was assigned MoviPrep, but they all suck of course. 

But the worst part of the whole prep was the antibiotics I was prescribed: Neomycin and Erythromycin. One or both of them made me so nauseous, I was only able to keep 2 each of the pills down, and I was supposed to take 6 of each. I called the number I was given on my instruction form, well my husband did as I was leaning over the toilet bowl, and the woman on the other end was no help whatsoever. So I crossed my fingers that it wouldn't matter much, and it ended up not mattering at all.

So the morning of my surgery, I reported at my given report time, with my mother and husband next to me. I was handed two hospital gowns and a clear plastic bag to put my clothes and things in. I changed, and only kept my glasses on, until the very last second. They went over my medical history again, asked me the same questions over and over and over and OVER again. 

"What's your name?"

"What's your birth date?"

"What are you here for today?"

"What's your surgeon's name?"

I get the added pleasure of the same comment over and over again.

"Your hair color is so gorgeous." (I'm a redhead. I've been getting that one my entire life. Can't say I've gotten tired of it yet. Because seriously, who can tire of comment like that? Not me.)

So eventually, an orderly came to get me with a bed on wheels in hand. The orderly was the nicest, most sincere guy ever. I wish I could remember his name. I hopped on up, and handed my glasses over to my husband and got my final kisses. From this point on, the combination of adrenaline and not having my glasses on, the rest feels like a fuzzy dream. I remember my surgeon, Dr. Stein, coming to meet us. He said a quick hello to my mother and husband and then we were off. 

We chatted about the NFL while we were getting in the elevator. He's a Jets fan, and being from Philly, I root for the Eagles. At least, he's not a Giants fan, or Dallas. I would have called off the surgery right there. We get to the operating room and Dr. Stein says he'll be back in a little bit. 

This is when everyone on the surgical team comes and introduces themselves. This was especially hard because I can't see anyone's face, since I don't have my glasses on. I met multiple nurses, at least 3 surgical residents, and 2 anesthesiology residents, as well as a dedicated anesthesiologist nurse, and the anesthesiologist himself. One of them started an IV. I was given one more pill to take, not sure what it was. 

The anesthesiologist team members keep asking me if I have any fake teeth. And that's when it dawns on me that I am going to be intubated. I don't know why, but this made me the most nervous. Maybe because I hadn't had a lot of time to think about that, but I was more nervous about that than I was about waking up with a bag of poop attached to my abdomen. I had a long time to prepare for that.

There was bustling as some other patients were wheeled in to recover, others were pre-op like me. I also overheard some sort of surgical Skype call, but not with my surgeon.

And then Dr. Stein returns and we are on the move again. I get something injected into my IV to relax me, and then the rest is black. The last thing I remember is being wheeled across the recovery room and realizing how much bigger it was than I noticed when I was wheeled in...