Big Day Part II

Once I arrived back into my room out of recovery, my room was filled with people.  There was a lot of love in that room and I was grateful.  My Mom, Dad, Terry, My SIL, My Husband and two of my three kids were there.  Later, there were a total of 10 people at one time. I realized later that having that many people with me was truly exhausting.  I am a girl who likes to be the life of the party and I felt like it must be so boring for everyone to surround me and watch me sleep, so I tried to talk a lot, joke, laugh, even through mostly closed eyes.  My eyelids felt like they weighed 1000lbs.  I could hear everything going on and I was responding but I could not keep my eyes open no matter how hard I tried.  I don't remember feeling any pain.  The nurses came in to get my vitals every 4 hours and gave me a shot in the stomach of Heprin every 8 hours to avoid blood clots.  The shots didn't hurt but the bruises they left are gnarly.  I have bad bruising behind both arms and on both sides of my stomach.  They were giving me morphine when I came out of surgery but it makes me itch so bad, that I asked to be changed to Toradol IV which is more like a strong aspirin.  I don't really know if there was ever any pain to speak of or if I just stayed ahead of it because I honestly don't remember pain at all other than gas type pain.  During the surgery, which they did laproscopically, they needed to fill me with air to be able to work around my organs and do what they needed to do.  That air needs to come out in the form of gas.  Unfortunately, I wasn't passing any gas so by the second day the gas pain was somewhat uncomfortable in my stomach, neck, and shoulder area.  Before the surgery, I was warned about this and told that I should try to get up and walk as soon as possible to help the gas pains dissapate.  I wasn't allowed to get up and walk until about 7:30pm the first night.  By then, I was so exhausted from the entire days events, I didn't have much energy at all.

I vividly remember my mouth being so, so dry.  I kept asking the nurse for ice chips but I wasn't allowed any. I was only allowed for my Mom to swab my mouth with a small sponge on a stick that was dipped in water.  I had been warned of this ahead of time, so I did bring some medicated lip balm with me but that didn't help the cotton mouth I felt.  After what seemed like hours, I was allowed to have one ice chip at a time.  It was like Heaven.

My first meal after surgery arrived in the hospital room around 6:30pm.  It was 3/4 c chicken broth, hot tea, strawberry jello and a lemon ice sorbet.  I was very scared that I wouldn't be able to swallow anything.  I had been told by the P.A. at my Doctor's office that sometimes your esophagus will clench up and not allow you to swallow anything down right away.  I had a very small sip of broth.  Next, I had a very small, like tip of the teaspoon sip of the ice lemon sorbet which tasted so very good to a dry, dry mouth.  I might have had 3 or 4 more sips and I was crying because I was so happy that I could actually swallow.  Then, suddenly I didn't feel too good.  Maybe I took those sips too fast.  I felt like I might vomit.  I really, really did not want to vomit.  Thankfully, I didn't.

At the same time this was all happening, the nurses started asking if I felt like I had to urinate.  I hadn't urinated since I arrived at the hospital at 5:30am and by now it was almost 7pm.  I didn't have a catheter in.  I had no desire to urinate despite the fact that they were giving me many bags of fluid thru my IV.  I tried to urinate but could go less than 100cc's.  At the same time as I was on the toilet trying to do all this, the Nurse came in trying to get me to drink a 1oz medicine cup full of Loratab (liquid vicodin).  After the experience I just had trying to swallow broth, and the fact that I felt nauseas, freezing and scared, there was no way I could get the loratab down.  Plus, I wasn't in pain.  I asked if I could have another intravenous shot of the toradol.  Next, they wanted me to walk around the nurses station.  It just wasn't a good time.  I felt like a failure.  Back to bed I went.  They came in with an ultrasound machine to scan my bladder and see how much urine was in there.  More than 500cc's.  Time for the straight catheter.  Good times.

Based on the fact that I wasn't urinating on my own the way I should, and the fact that I couldn't tolerate clear liquids as well as I should, the Doctor decided to keep me in the hospital another night.