Surgical Recovery: Oh the Pain

It has almost been a week since my surgery, which went well. I was very scared and as soon as I wasn't with my mom I cried. It basically went like this:

Wednesday morning we drove to the hospital where once I was in the surgical ward they proceeded to get me changed into a gown. Then I waited for about 45 minutes for someone to come get to take me to the OR. A very nice nurse told me to get into the bed then wheeled me down the hall and put me behind a curtain against the wall, where the anesthesiologist was going to come talk to me. The surgeon actually came over first to explain the procedure. He told me that they'd cut a hole near my belly button, a very small one. Then they'd insert a camera into that hole (I think it was actually inserted in the hole above it, but what do I know). After inserting the camera they'd pump some gas into my stomach to blow it up so he can see. Then they'd do two more incisions on the side of my belly to insert tools so he could clamp my gallbladder and remove it. Which I was ok with. However, I was not ok with going to sleep and not knowing what was going on, so I got really scared and started bawling.  After sitting there and crying for about ten minutes the anesthesiologist came and told me that first they'd bring me into the room and hook me up to some monitors. Then they'd put an IV in me (at this point I stopped her and told her I'm scared of IV's and she said she'd give me some laughing gas so I won't care about the pain). Then they'd inject some stuff into the IV to make me numb, then they'd put me to sleep. After all that I'd be put into the recovery room until my belly deflates then I'll me moved to a regular room in the surgical ward.

Now, most of this went exactly the way they said. Went into the room, got on the operating table, had stickers put all over me which were attached to monitors, had a gas mask put on me for the laughing gas (which I'm familiar with from the dentists office). After the laughing gas was put on me though, that's where things went like I hadn't expected. First off I still felt the IV, it hurt. It was cold, it stung and my hand throbbed. I could feel it fine because my eyes were closed from the gas and all I had to focus on was the sound of the nurses voice and the pain in my hand. Then the nurse told me to open my eyes (and there were a few more people in the room then when I'd closed them. After they were opened I heard "now this is going to pinch" and my inner wrist hurt like hell. I think the IV had come out of my vein on my hand so they had to put it someplace else. They had taken me off the laughing gas at this point so I was no longer in a fog and it hurt so bad I couldn't stop crying. Then they put the oxygen mask on me and that's the last thing I remember until I woke up.

Waking up from gallbladder surgery was..... painful. The gas in my stomach made it incredibly difficult to breathe (I actually couldn't sleep very well afterwards because my breathing was so shallow I thought I wasn't). The only thing that made it easier to breathe was laying on my side, which - as you can imagine - hurt like hell since I had 4 fresh holes in my stomach and my belly was blown up so big it looked like I had 2 pillows piled up on top of my stomach.

I was in and out of sleep for a few hours, woke up once but felt so sick that I had to go back to sleep. Finally I woke up and was feeling alright. The nurse (who was very mean by the way) got me some cookies and crackers and gingerale and got me moving again.

Recovery wasn't too bad. I laid in bed most of the time and didn't want to move much. I'm moving a lot better now. I've been running errands all day, but I'm definitely going to need my rest later today since I'm starting to feel the pain worse now. I'll probably be back to work Friday as long as I'm feeling up to it. Getting up and down a lot is going to be hard on me so I don't know how it'll work out, but we will see.

- Cassy