Surgery Recap

I’m finally settled back at home, and have my internet back (yay!) so, as promised, I’m going to share my surgery story.  I apologize if its too long, I just wanted to get it all down before I forgot.  So here goes nothing…

The night before the surgery, the hubs showed up after work with flowers and a sweet card.  And then, because I tried to follow all of Stephanie's tips (yes, I'm pretending we're on a first name basis now), we went out for a “last meal”.  We went to my favorite build your own burger place, and were joined by my sister and her new boyfriend.  A good time was had by all (I think), though the poor new bf did get grilled a little, it was all in good fun.  After dinner, we went home and relaxed a little, then started packing and cleaning, because I didn’t want the place to be too much of a mess when we got back.  Although that successfully kept my mind off the impending surgery, before I knew it, it was midnight…. and we had to wake up at 3:30 a.m.  Suffice to say, we didn't get much sleep. 

At 3:30, ok more like 3:45 a.m., the morning of the surgery the Hubs and I woke up, showered, got the dogs corralled and in the car, and then headed to my parents house.  We got there around 4:45 a.m., dropped the dogs off, switched to my Mom's car (she wanted to come and she has a nicer car :) ) and got on our way to the hospital.  Funny thing, there were two routes we considered taking, and by accident we took the one we ended up on, but stuck with it.  I think I remember my mom saying when we got to the hospital that there was an accident and traffic the other way, so we would've likely been late (or might not have even made it) had we gone the way we meant to.  Talk about some intervention on that one :).  

We got there around 6, right on time, and checked in. Once I was checked in, a nurse came and escorted me and another woman to the pre-op area, we dropped off our loved ones in a waiting room on the way.  I gave a urine sample, changed into my hospital gown, and got my blood tested.  They were checking for my blood type, which somehow I don’t know, so I asked for them to tell me.  They said they would after the surgery but I forgot to ask.  I guess I’ll find out some other day.

The pre-op area was pretty relaxed.  (the Hubs just told me the pre-op area was the same as the recovery room.  I had no idea.  Mind. Blown).  There were  two nice nurses and we were just telling stories and laughing most of the time, so it kept the nerves at bay.  My dorkiest moment:  the nurse took my temperature with something that she just swiped along my face.  I blurted out "cool, that’s like star trek!"

Tricorder anyone?

(I guess its official, the Hubs has turned me into a trekkie, I’ll just have to live with that).

The worst part of pre-op was getting the IV in. The nurse tried a vein in my hand but that vein was so not having it… ouuuch.  She gave up on the hand and went to the inner elbow… much better, my veins there are always good.

Soon enough my Mom and the Hubs were ushered back to hang out with me, and the anesthesiologist showed up right after them.  He asked if I had any problems with general anesthesia before, I said I didn't think so, last time I had it was when I was seven having my tonsils out. So I turned to my Mom and asked if she remembered any issues I had. Her response was "you didn’t have your tonsils out, did you?!?"  I poked fun at My mom for not remembering I had my tonsils out for the rest of the time, lol.  I also  asked the anesthesiologist about the anti-nausea patch that I've heard about.  He assured me that since I don’t regularly get motion sickness, I would’t need it, and that he would be giving me other medicines to deal with nausea… in hindsight I wish I had pressed the issue more.

Dr. S then came by to go over the surgery.  She was calm about it all, quickly explained what would be happening, answered our questions, then was on her way.  The last thing they were waiting for before I could get hauled off to the operating room was my HCG result.  When it finally came back negative, I told them “ I could’ve saved you the time and told you that” lol.

Then it was “hugs and kisses time” as they called it, I said goodbye to my mom and the Hubs and was wheeled off to the OR.  In any procedure I’ve had before, I’ve been put under before making it to the OR.  This time, my IV wasn't even hooked up yet, so I was wide awake when I was wheeled in there and scooted myself onto the table… below the very big and intimidating robot. 

Friendly looking, isn't it?

They mentioned it had a name, and I think they told me its name was margarita??  But I was administered the drugs and was out pretty quick… so I may never know what the robot's actual name is, lol.

As for how the surgery went, the Hubs made a recording of what the doctor said, though the quality wasn't awesome, but between the recording and what the Hubs and my mom remembered, I was able to piece it mostly together. By the way, I'm not sure if I ever said exactly what the surgery was, just in case, it was a robotic ovarian wedge resection and diagnostic laparoscopy.  The surgery went pretty well.  The doctor didn't see any endometriosis, which was a big relief.  Even though I never had an symptoms of it, I was worried it would show up, and  I really didn’t want to have just one more thing wrong with me. My uterus looked good, but she took a culture and we'll hear about the result at my follow up.  I hope we'll be able to get to the bottom of the TEBB. As for my ovaries, I guess there were so many cysts that my ovaries were really big, and instead of being oval shaped like normal, they were round.  One was worse that the other.  I’ll be interested to find which one it was, and if it corresponds to some pain I've been having.  So anyways, she cleared out the cysts, wedged resected the ovaries to a normal size, and sewed them back together.  She ran into a bit of a problem with that,…. I guess the ovaries were very delicate, kept tearing, and she had a hard time keeping them stitched… so it took some extra time but she got it done.  I guess it had really worried the Hubs, they had been told the surgery would be two hours, but it ended up being four because of that.  He kept asking for updates because he was scared something had happened.  Poor guy L.

After all that was done, I was woken up.  I think I was in the middle of a good dream or something, because I remember being irritated they were waking me up then.  I don’t remember everything in order from the recovery room.   I remember seeing the clock and being surprised that it was 12, my surgery had started around 7:30/8:00 and was only supposed to be 2 hours.  But everyone was just saying the surgery went well.  I remember that I felt like I had to go to the bathroom.  They said I had had a catheter in during surgery and that my bladder was empty, but they gave me a bed pan just in case, turns out they were right.  In hindsight I'm glad I didn't actually have to utilize the bed pan.  I was super groggy, my throat hurt, and I was in a lot of pain.  After complaining about it for a bit, someone asked me what my pain was on a scale from 1-10, I said 7 or 8. They gave me some pain medication that staved the pain off for a little bit, but a half hour later the pain started climbing again, it was around a 5 or 6, and they gave me more pain meds.  I was also nauseated… I bet that patch would have come in handy.  

Then I was just kinda alone in the recovery room for a while… the nurses were busy with other people and in and out of grogginess. Finally, around 1:00, the Hubs was brought back to me.  Once he was back there, we talked for a little bit, he told me that surgery went well and that he recorded what the doc said so I would hear it later.  We hung out for about a half hour.  Then the nurse said I needed to pee before I left and gave me something to drink so that I could and ushered the Hubs out while I waited for my bladder to fill up.

While I was waiting for that, I had a particularly unpleasant moment with the nurse.  She asked if I was having the surgery so I could have a baby.  I said yes.  Then she asked how long we’d been married, I told her three years.  Then she said, oh, you’re so young, you have plenty of time.  I was so not in the mood to hear that, you know while I was laying there in pain in the recovery room.  So I rolled my eyes at her and told her, well, if things are bad now while I’m young, they’re probably just going to get worse, not better.  Then she went on to say something to the effect of I would have kids when I was ready for them and I just needed to relax.  I so wanted to yell at her or something… but figured that wasn’t a great idea.  I just looked away and stopped talking to her.  That just about all I had enough energy for anyways.

Finally, I felt like I needed to pee, so the nurse got me to the side of the bed and to sit up.  I tried to stand... much pain and nausea.  We waited a bit and I tried again, but I was still in pain and dizzy.  So she got me some more pain meds, and let that set in for a while.  After the pain subsided, the nurse brought over this thing to wheel me to the bathroom… I don’t know how to describe it… it was like a dolly crossed with a wheel chair.  Here, I found a picture of something like it:

weird, right?

 All of this made me feel like, for some reason, they were really in a rush to get me out of there, which kinda bothered me since I was still nauseated, dizzy, groggy, and kinda hurting, but I went along with it.  So she got me to the bathroom, and I was able to walk, or shuffle really, back from there to the bed  Then the Hubs was called in to dress me and we called my mom to swing the car around to pick me up.  Everything was going so fast, they almost forgot to take the IV out of my arm! Around 2, I was wheeled out to the car and we headed home.

I figure this post is long enough.  So stay tuned, the next will cover my recovery (so far) and some things I've learned.