Well, mine upholstered belly has been reupholstered and is now purple/green bruised and battered looking, with a wicked scar on the right hand side, but slowly healing up just fine.
There were numerous heparin shots every 8 hours that left tiny dots of violet across the adipose expanse that look like weird freckles, and there are two big bruises, one on either side, I assume from bumping into things while dragging my IV pole full of antibiotics and morphine around during those first couple of days after surgery.
Virginia Mason Hospital's 15th floor, where I landed because they had no beds elsewhere, is an oncology (cancer) unit, yet it was the most positive, warm and comforting hospital room I've ever stayed in, and my roomate Eileen, who was actually a cancer patient, would, I think, agree with me. Eileen had also had her abdomen slashed open, to remove 3 tumors in different spots, and bless her, she took the pain, Foley catheter and bloating of the bowel all in calm, even tempered stride, never raising her lovely voice and always being gracious, courteous and generous to all she encountered. For example, I am sure that I snore, though not loudly, when I sleep on my back, as I had to do once I was brought up from recovery. Eileen never once growled at me about my nocturnal grring, nor did she complain about my Miralax induced crawls to the toilet in the middle of the night.
The nurses and the medical technicians (or techs as they now call nurses aids) were wonderful, professional yet compassionate, concerned and consistently ready to help if you were in pain, needed a bath, wanted a fresh robe or were just in need of a kind face after a benadryl-induced nightmare. Monica and Jenny and the whole staff encouraged me to continue my attempts at meandering down the hall, though I was groggy and dizzy from the pain meds and aching in my newly-unstable core. They never laughed at my feeble attempts at bending over to pick up something I'd dropped, or at my cumbersome way of getting into and out of bed.
When my IV port infiltrated and started to burn like someone had dropped a burning coal on my forarm, a day shift nurse and a resident were quick to remove the old port and put in a new one without any pain suffered at all.
Dr T's residents both were helpful, but one in particular was kind enough to get me off the morphine drip and out of the Foley catheter nightmare, which was a godsend and made me feel light and unencumbered for the first time in 3 days. He got me on to ibuprofen and percoset ASAP, so I could head home and free up a much-needed bed for other surgery patients who were beginning to stack up in the hallways on gurneys.
Dr T explained to me that my surgery had taken a mere 90 minutes, and that I had the 'longest appendix' he'd ever seen, which had wrapped around some of my other organs and which he happily removed like a bad weed from my body. He allowed me a full liquid diet the day after I came out of the OR, and I was able to have juice and popcicles and even soymilk while I was at VM, something I'd not expected.
Now that I am home and almost a week out of my surgery, I am still on a mostly liquid and all soft foods diet, with a dollop of Miralax every morning to make sure things go through. I am hoping to quit taking the laxative this weekend and get back to regular bathroom times now that I feel my intestines are healing up. I did attend a book group meeting Tuesday night, and yes, I had to have help getting up and down out of the car and into the chair, but I felt it was well worth it to see all my book peeps. Plus I spent Wednesday in bed, being very careful not to strain or pull my stitches, just for good measure.
Today I had my son lug the vacuum upstairs so I could vacuum the upper half of the house, which was a filthy mess when I got home (this is a whole 'nother topic, but why can't men clean? Why can't they see the dirt and germs right in front of them? Can't they smell a bathroom in need of a good scrubbing? Why not?). Now I am hoping to take a walk this afternoon and have my dear neighbor and friend Janine over for a chin wag of some sort before Nick gets home.
I don't think that I lost much weight while only drinking fluids, because I wasn't getting any exercise to go along with the sugar calories I was consuming, though there wasn't much of them. Still, with any luck I will be walking Witte Road and back next week, or at least walking Lake Wilderness Trail and trying to get back on my feet with my weight loss program, though I don't think I will be able to eat protein until the last week of June at least.
But I have been told I'm not to take any of my Crohns medications until I see my gastro doc and get the okay from my surgeon, who tells me that the rest of my intestines looked clean and healthy, from what he could see. Maybe I won't have to take expensive Crohns meds anymore...wouldn't that be a treat?!
Wish me luck and sending healing waves to me whenever you're ready!
