I can't believe today is officially one week since my surgery and having my ileostomy, Ellie. I know I wanted to chronicle my experience in the hospital, but I was not up for blogging and, honestly, I don't remember too much of the first 3 days.
I do know that I did not have an epidural like they told me I would. I had a pump that would dispense Dilaudid every 8 minutes. If I fell asleep, you can guarantee I was waking up in some pain since I couldn't push my button while asleep. No NG tube, either, thank goodness. I was rather scared about that. They was able to do the surery half laparoscopic and half open. I have about 4 laparscopic incisions and then they reopened my old c-section scar, only made it longer. At least it's not going up and down my stomach.
The anesthesia stayed in my system for about 3 days and I was falling asleep quite a bit and was saying some off the-wall things. Apparently, I have 11 children!
I had a non-surgical complication the first night regarding my IV. It came out of the vein in my hand (I told them that always happens to IVs in the hand, and they didn't listen). I was paging my nurse for about an hour complaining of severe pain and my hand hurting, but she never came. About an hour and half later, a resident came into the room to check my incisions and he saw my ballooned hand. It was literally 3 times its size. He brought in this device to check bloodflow when I told him parts of the hand were numb and I wasn't getting any blood flow to my index finger and thumb. So, the severe pain was from me being slices open not even 12 hours prior to this and all of my pain meds was being trapped under my skin instead of going into the vein. He yelled at the nurse for not doing her job and coming in whenever I paged. NEedless to say, a few people were calling that morning after I told them to file a complaint against that nurse...too bad I coudnt remember her name.
I got to come home that Friday because they said I was healing very well and there was nothing they couldnt do for me there that I couldn't do at home.
So, a week after surgery and I'm still in some pain, especially when changing positions. I still walk like a grandma and tire very easily. My husband is doing a great job at taking care of me and our kids and has even been keeping up with the housework. People from church have been bringing us meals so we dont have to worry about eating my hsubands cooking, though my appetite is nowhere normal and I have a bit of restrictions on what I can eat. I eat a half a cup of pudding and feel unbelievably full so I'm lucky if I eat about 300 calories a day, if that.
Ellie isn't a big as a pain as I thought she would be. She needs emptied about 5-6 time a day and it only takes a minute to do. I havent had a problem with leaks or with my wafer, but I understand I will have an accident at some time, hopefully that can be avoided though. Ive lost a few pounds in the hospital, mainly from not eating anything for almost a week and probably from the loss of my colon. The doc said my colon looked like a long snake and was about 13 1/2 feet long.
I know with every day I will feel a little better. I just can't rush myself to heal and need to take it easy and put everything on Dave, but I'm so used to doing everything that doing nothing is driving me crazy. I should try my best to enjoy this break :)
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