Post-Operation Update

Well I can honestly say that this has been one lonnngg week. The surgery (and recovery) didn't go exactly as planned but in the end everything seems to have worked out just fine. Here's the story...

I went in on Thursday morning and was taken right back for surgery, and just an hour after surgery I woke up from the anesthesia and was cleared to head home. A short while after being home I started having really severe pains in my stomach, right below my ribs in the center. Without exaggerating, it was the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. The pain was so bad that it was causing me to pass out and throw up continuously. Nervous and scared, I rushed back to the hospital where my doctor met me to look at my incisions. I was given morphine and finally experienced relief from the horrible pain. The doctor said that everything looked fine and the pain was probably from built-up CO2 in my stomach from the surgery, although to me it did NOT feel like gas pain to me! Either way, the pain was gone so I was happy. The doctor admitted me to the hospital for the next two nights to keep an eye on my recovery and help manage the pain.

It really was such a blessing to be able to stay in the hospital for a lot of reasons. First off, the bed was super comfortable and helped to lift me up and down from the bed when needed. I was also able to stay on the good pain meds and have the comfort of nurses taking care of me through the night. But the most unexpected thing that happened is that my mom got really sick on Thursday and even worse on Friday and was unable to do much of anything to help take care of me, even though she wanted to. I felt so bad for her! Me being in the hospital gave her a chance to go home and work on getting well without having to worry about taking care of me (And now she's feeling much better by the way!).

On Saturday morning I got to come home and was happy to get settled in my own bed. The Doctor prescribed me Norco (Vicodin) to help with the pain and while it worked well and helped me sleep, it started giving me some awful side effects like chest pressure and nausea. Sunday and Monday I continued to take it easy and started to slowly wean myself off the heavy medication, which really made me feel much better. I think I'd rather have the surgery pain than the medicine side effects - I guess I'm just really sensitive to meds! Yesterday was the first day I was up and around the house and today was the first day I was able to completely stop taking my pain meds (Woo hoo!). I'm starting to feel like myself again, just a bit sore and slow-moving. I have my post-op check up tomorrow so we'll see what the doctor has to say about my recovery. I would say I'm probably pretty average... I'll have to take it slow for another week or two but it's not too horrible (with the exception of the first two days of course!)

The good news in all of this is that the doctor gave me confirmation that my gallbladder definitely was the culprit in this roller coaster of illness - He said it was inflamed and infected when he removed it. Thank goodness because I would hate to have been told that it looked perfectly healthy and was not actually the cause of my troubles. Now, I guess only time will tell if I am able to resume a completely normal diet again (I'm still too nervous to try some foods...) but at this point I'm remaining optimistic. Thanks again for your prayers and encouragement! I'm beyond ready to put all this medical drama in the past and move on to bigger and better things :)