Day One - Post Op

This is less fun than the diet, if you can believe that. My typing may be poor but it's because my vision is REALLY bad. It's one of the side effects of the pain medications. But I digress, what I really want to do is tell you how things went.

We checked in at 5:30 am on the nose. I had to do a UA to make sure I wasn't pregnant. Around 7:30 am all my prep was done and they wheeled me off to surgery. I really wasn't very nervous, which was kind of odd.

I woke up in the recovery room in LOADS of pain! It was almost impossible to get pain meds there. They kept saying "when you get to you room, the staff can help you. They are familiar with how to handle this." I shit you not, that is what I was told. I mean, if you can't understand or deal with the fact that a patient, just out of surgery, needs help with pain control, you shouldn't work in the fucking surgery recovery room. I'm just saying.

So, I sat there for what seemed like an eternity begging for pain meds. By the time they wheeled me up to my room, I was shaking from the pain, and crying. My mouth was so incredible dry that I couldn't move my tongue. They must have seen the tears because they finally asked me why I was crying, I tried to tell them it was because of the pain, but I couldn't form words because my mouth was that dry. They just ignored me and kept prepping to switch me to the other bed. I tried yelling at them to stop and just get me pain meds, but they still didn't listen. Finally, the Chef (my partner) yelled at them. He chewed them out and said to them, "can't you see she is in pain!?! Quit fucking around with the bed and get her a fucking pill!"

The dryness of my mouth prevented me from swallowing anything, so they gave me pain meds through my IV. AFter that, I pretty much slept for two days. I kind of prefer to sleep when I'm miserable. It helps me endure whatever is happening with minimal damage.

In the middle of the night last night, my heart rate monitor started going off. The alarm wouldn't stop beating because my heart rate was down to 43-44 beats per minute. The average is between 60-80, so mine was abnormally low. they took my blood pressure and the nurse checked my pulse to make sure the monitor wasn't off...it wasn't, but my blood pressure was okay. They put me on an EKG kind of heart-rate monitor all night and made 4 attempts to draw blood to check my thyroid (my body was so puffy from forced fluids that they couldn't find a vein). Long fucking night. The on-call doctor came to see and he said there were no signs of anything else wrong, just the slow heart rate, so he wasn't too concerned. But he would come check on me again in the morning. Which he did, and I was okay.

The same day of the surgery, I got up and walked around and drank water. The next day I had to drink two ounces of broth before they would let me go. I also had to pee a certain volume...which was kind of weird to pee in a bowl in the bathroom. The chaplain came to see me and offered me communion. I declined explaining that I wasn't Catholic and that I just had an operation on my stomach, so... He asked if he could pray with me, which I thanked him for his consideration, but being that I'm an atheist, it wouldn't make any sense. After that, a couple more doctors and nurses came to visit, then they discharged me.

I got back to my in-law's house, where the Chef and his kids were staying while I was in the hospital. I couldn't help myself...before laying back down to sleep some more, I had to weigh myself. I GAINED 5 POUNDS! Who the hell goes to the hospital for weightloss surgery and walks out heavier!!! LMAO!!! Obviously, it was water weight from the forced fluids, but it was kind of amusing to me.

Oh, by the way, I only used the dress, yoga pants, deoderant, tooth brush/paste, and phone. Everything else was completely unnecessary.