Surgery #2

On Oct 17th I went in for gall bladder surgery. Seeing as I had had surgery just 2 months previous and healed like a pro, I figured I had nothing to worry about... Especially since most people I've talked to have said this surgery is a breeze and has a fast recovery. So I went in at 8am to get everything prepped for my 10:00 surgery. They asked me about a million questions to make sure I wasn't high-risk for surgery. The only complication I knew about was that my oxygen levels after my c-section went low (below 90), so they had me on oxygen for a bit.

I went into the operating room and they put a nice mask on me, told me to take deep breaths and *Boom* I was out. The next thing I know I have all these people tapping on me saying, "Come on... wake up! Breathe! Come on... you need to breathe! Are you with us? Wake up! Come on!" I heard them, but nothing made sense, and then I thought to myself, "I am breathing... I can hear you, can't I?" Then I heard one last person say, "You've got to take some deep breaths... Come on!" So I took a deep breath and heard a slight sigh of relief and then more pleas to repeat that action. After a few deep breaths (me, still half asleep), everything quieted back down and I heard one person say, "My word! I could not get her to breathe. Her oxygen levels got down to 23 and she made me way too nervous..." and then I was back out.

After I was in the recovery room, all I remember is that alarms kept going off and the nurse would walk by my room and remind me to breathe. Getting checked out was a little frustrating because Scott had to be at work and my mom had Jayna, so she was able to pick me up, but it was difficult for her to actually come all the way in. So, there I was, completely drugged and unable to make sense of much, but it didn't matter because I wasn't given any instructions whatsoever. I found out later that the Dr. had given Scott some info on when I could bathe and whatnot, but apparently all the info was in the nifty little folder they gave me. It would have been nice if the nurse had told me that everything I needed to know was in there. I do, however, remember that I asked the nurse if they called in the prescription and she said, "I haven't yet, but I need to." So I didn't bother looking in the folder they sent with me and sent my mom to the pharmacy, and lo and behold, they didn't call it in. Luckily, I had a bit of the pain killer left over from my c-section and it had a refill on it. I got the refill before I could actually get the other prescription in and filled. Thank goodness for my c-section. I would have been in some serious pain!

Sadly, I didn't not feel better in 2-3 days like most people. In fact, I was in bed, unable to hold Jayna all the way through Sunday. Yep, 5 days in bed, asleep. Then on Monday I felt a bit better, but could still not pick Jayna up... she had to be handed to me. I called the Dr on Tuesday to see why I wasn't healing faster and they told me that I could have pain for up to 2 weeks and since my body had just recovered from another surgery, my body would probably take a bit longer to heal. Good times!

I'm feeling much better today. Still have pain, but it's minimal compared to what it was.

Mom came and took care of Jayna and me, which was so wonderful! I felt horrible because the first night after my surgery Jayna screamed until 7am... Way to initiate Grandma, little one! Funny enough, we had her on a decent sleeping schedule until then. Now she's reversed and we're struggling to get her flipped back around. Today, with me trying to wake her up, she slept from 9:30 am to 6:45 pm with only one 1 1/2 oz bottle at 3:00. Why, oh why, can't she do that at night?! Oh well, welcome to motherhood!

Through this whole experience, I've decided that when it comes time for me to die, I just want someone to give me general anesthesia and let me stop breathing. It was totally peaceful :)