Surgery's done~~I'm home

**pomtzu** · 10-23-2011, 07:43 AM

I actually came home Friday night which was ahead of time, since doc had said this weekend. I'm sure not complaining tho. Surgery went fairly well, and I left my cranky, stoney gallbladder at the hospital.

The morning of surgery started out as planned and we got to the hospital just before the scheduled arrival time of 9:15. Then Murphy's Law kicked in!

I no sooner signed in than the OR charge nurse came out and got us and took us into the conference room, and I knew something was up at that point. It seems an emergency case (a brain bleed) took my scheduled OR suite and all the others were already booked full, and they didn't know how long the emergency procedure would take. I could either cancel and reschedule, wait there, or come back home and they would call us with updates. Since the hospital is only less than a half hour drive, we decided to come back home and take it from there. After several updates, they called a little before 1 and told us to come back in and they would be ready for me when I got there. So off we go to try again. I was taken right in and about 10 nurses and anesthetists were swarming around me like bees, and I was in the OR around 2 - finally! Of course I don't remember anything after that till I woke up in recovery around 5:30.

The next day I really didn't feel too bad at all, even tho doc said it was longer and more difficult than even he knew it would be. I had to have an open procedure rather than laproscopic, due to huge amounts of scar tissue from numerous previous abdominal surgeries. He said everything inside was cemented together with scar tissue, so it was slow going cutting everything away, but he finally got it out. He checked out the common bile duct for stones or tumor, since it was very inflamed and much larger than it should be, but found nothing wrong to be causing that, but my levels are all okay and they will just keep a close check on it.

Thursday I crashed first thing in the a.m. with severe nausea and dry heaves which was probably a delayed after effect of the anesthesia. After several i.v. doses of one med that wasn't working to ease it up, I asked for what I take at home, and that one did the trick. Between the pain meds and that med, it knocked me out for several hours, and when I woke up I felt fine and was actually hungry.

So Friday a.m. doc said I could get the i.v. and catheter out, and if everything was working right, I could go home. Woo-hoo - my DIL picked me up after she got off work and I was outta there!!! Of course I got a wild and crazy greeting from the Fuzzbuttz when they saw me getting out of the car, and came flying out to greet me. I was getting a daily report on them to ease my mind, and they didn't even go on their usual hunger strike/protest like they usually do when I leave them for more than a day. Sparky did get into his sullen, dejected, I miss my Mommy mode on Thursday tho.

They haven't let me out of their sight since I got home. It was so great to sleep in my own COMFY bed with the furkids snuggled up with me - one of the finer, yet simpler things in life, for sure!

So I'm on my way back to normal - or as normal as I can muster.

Really no restrictions as to what I can do, other than no lifting anything over 10 lbs, and no driving if I take the Percoset, but I only had to take one of those the whole day yesterday. I'm just moving a little slower and a little bent over, but really feeling good - all considered. So that's the long, boring ordeal. I'm just so glad it's over and done with, and hopefully I won't have anything else go wrong for at least 10 more years.