Tuesday
This was our twins’ first birthday. I had wanted to recognize the day by writing a letter to them and burning it in our wood stove after having dinner out with DH. Instead, DH decided over the weekend that we need to recaulk/re grout our huge master shower. We limited it to caulking, but it was still a four day project. I spent most of my day getting the house ready for my dad and step mom, stripping caulk from the shower, and then trying to clean some of the innumerable bits of stripped caulk from the bathroom floor. I didn’t have time to get ready for dinner and never vaguely had a chance to think about my letter or the fire. The priority was having a shower when I got home from the hospital and wouldn’t be able to move. As it was the bathroom was a complete mess when we left, with tools, chemicals, and bags of supplies everywhere, plus caulk scrapings everywhere but the floor. Not a good day.
Wednesday
I got one last good workout in, and we headed out to Chicago. Just to add to the fun, as I went to throw out all the trash in the house before leaving, I discovered that we had mice who and apparently arrived en-masse and chewed through our trash bags. Sent an apology note to dad and SM and left anyway, as there wasn’t much we could do.
I drove for the first 4-5 hours while DH worked, then he took over. Chicago traffic was awful. We got to our hotel around 6, and got upgraded. Highly recommend the place: The Guesthouse, in Uptown. We walked to dinner. I got a rice, kale, and sweet potato bowl with Thai peanut sauce and it was terrible - inedibly salty. I was too hungry/hangry at that point to find a new place to eat (it was also below freezing, windy, and a 3/4 mile walk to our hotel), but the manager refunded my meal. DH took me to Baskin Robbins, and then we returned to the hotel for the best night of hotel sleep I’ve ever had.
Thursday
I had grand plans to do something fun in Chicago this day. Instead I had a two hour work meeting, we got breakfast at this amazing cafe, then spent way too long driving to find the hospital complex and the hotel for afterward. We got Thai for dinner and it was good. Side note: it’s really hard to find gluten free vegetarian food in Uptown. I was really disappointed. I was NPO after midnight.
Friday
I had to check in at 7:30, and we were worried about traffic, so I was up early and got a shower. Didn’t hit any traffic. Parked in structure A ($18/day with validation) and went in to the DCAM same day/ambulatory surgery for check in. They gave me a number so DH could track my status on the monitors, and then I waited.
Just after 7:30, a pre-op nurse came and got me. She confirmed my name, dob, allergies, and had me give a urine sample for a pregnancy test. I got three bracelets - one for allergies (it just said “multiple” since she didn’t write them all down), two identifying me. Then I changed and put all of my clothes and belongings into a plastic garment bag. Next up was an IV. I’m allergic to adhesives and they had very few choices for me, far less than my local hospitals. That was suboptimal. I was told my temperature was 99, which is very high for me, but not high enough to postpone surgery. I suppose that might have been a harbinger.
Once I was set with a warm blanket, DH came back and kept me company. First a resident came in, confirmed the surgery I’d be having, and then had me pull up my hospital gown so she could write her initials on my abdomen. Apparently they do this to make sure they’re operating on the right part of the right patient? Either way, I’m not thrilled still having her initials on me as I don’t really want to scrub hard that close to the incision site and the ink is. . . Tenacious!
A research assistant came in and asked if they could take a tissue sample during surgery for research on ovarian cancer. I asked what the risks were and she couldn’t answer. That lack of professionalism plagued my stay. I felt oddly pressured, but as the daughter of a breast cancer survivor, agreed.
The anesthesiologist came in and told me that since I’m not pregnant, I had the choice of general or spinal. He also said that if I was pregnant, Haney would require general, to make sure I didn’t move at all. Most importantly, he told me that if I did the spinal, he could still use enough profofol that I wouldn’t know what’s going on, but he wouldn’t have to intubate me. That sounded good to me.
Haney came in, and reiterated a lot of what he’d told us during our consult. Then it was go time. I got one last hug from DH, and was wheeled into the OR. Everyone kept talking about what an ideal patient I am - I guess I have a nice spine for a spinal! :) I met all the OR nurses, got moved onto the operating table, got the ekg leads placed. A nurse set up a surgical instrument tray/stand with pillows, and the anesthesiologist had me sit up and lean over it. I remember him asking about glove sizing and that’s it.
Dr. Haney tells me that at one point during the surgery when they were tugging very hard, they heard my voice from over the drape asking to be knocked out further. I’m thrilled to report I don’t recall.
To be honest, I don’t recall waking in recovery, either. The first thing I remember is the feeling of being wheeled somewhere. Someone told DH or I that I had a pain pump to use, and then I was left in my “observation” room.
When I was lucid, I was in an insane amount of pain. Not from the surgical site, although I could sure feel that, but from my digestive system. It felt like someone was stabbing knives through my colon, constantly. I know my body well enough to be aware that’s what happens when my colon shuts down and gas starts to build. It was so bad I couldn’t draw a full breath. I knew that narcotics would make it worse, so I didn’t want to use the pain pump. DH and I asked, over and over again, for hours, for an alternative, and were just repeatedly told to push the button on the pump. It was an awful frustrating experience, to be in absolute agony, unable to breathe, and we couldn’t even get a doctor to come tell us there were no other options than narcotics.
Somewhere in there, I started throwing up. Puking with an abdominal incision is a special kind of hell. They wanted me on zofran, but that causes the same digestive problems, so that was a no-go. There are three things I know I can't have if I want my digestive system to work: sudafed, zofran, and narcotics. The hospital had me on two of the three.
After hours, the resident on call came in and told me to take the pain pump and the zofran, in a pissed off tone. I told her the problem wasn’t surgical pain, it was digestive, that zofran and narcotics would worsen it. She didn’t say anything useful. I asked for reglan instead of zofran, because reglan will cause the digestive system to speed up, doing exactly what I needed, and will reduce nausea. She agreed to that and left.
That was my night.
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