A slightly high, slightly TMI post-surgery post!
HELLO. I am on day 1 of recovery from my surgery to remove a golf ball-sized tumor on my left ovary! I am on Percocet and I think I still have a bit of the anesthesia drugs in my system, because I'm still very dopey and tired and wheeeee.
So here's how this all went down!
Tuesday I was on a clear liquids only diet, which wasn't too bad, except I had to drink 4 bottles of lemon-lime gatorade after I had to drink a bottle of lemon flavored magnesium citrate (LAXATIVE ALSKDJF). So I'm pretty over the whole lemon-lime flavor at this point lol. I also had to do an enema before bed; THAT WAS INTERESTING. I had to do one on Wednesday morning before we left for the hospital in New York, too, and Wednesday I couldn't eat or drink anything. I get really bad breath when I don't eat, apparently, so SORRY EVERYONE lol.
I drove up to the city so that I could stay calmer than I would as a passenger. It gave me something to concentrate on, plus my dad's driving is awful and it makes me and my mom severely car sick. So we got up there, got in, filled out paperwork, did a few tests, and honestly we only ended up waiting around for about an hour and a half before they brought me upstairs to the pre-op area to talk to the doctor and the anesthesiologist.
I like my doctor ... at first I wasn't sure what to think of him because he's very dry, but the more I saw him in appointments the more I liked him because he's very calming and soothing. He does the surgery nearly every day, more than once a day, so we were all really confident and comfortable with that. It was laparoscopic AND robotic, so it wasn't even like ... him doing it. They used robot arms! Kind of cool lol.
I was so nervous about being put under, but it ended up not being much of a big deal, thankfully. The anesthesiologist kept me talking so I was a little distracted, and I remember the last thing we talked about was Avenged Sevenfold LOL. Next thing I knew they were waking me up, asking me to scoot myself onto the gurney to go to the recovery room. It was really hard to wake up though, because honestly I was just still so tired ... the nurse had to keep telling me to take deep breaths to get my lungs re-inflated and my oxygen up. I felt so whiney because I was like "sorry I'm just so sleepy" lol like a grumpy teenager. They told my parents they could come in but the nurse didn't know they'd gotten permission so she yelled at them at first, something like "THIS GIRL IS 25!" and my mom was like "But they told us we could come in and she's our baby, and you know you always need your mom" and that somehow worked on the nurse lol. She ended up being really sweet and awesome.
You have to be able to pee before they let you go home, and I felt like I had to go but couldn't do it, so the nurse gave me some apple juice, and let me tell you, after two days of no food and an entire day without drinking, it was the best tasting juice I have ever had in my life. So once I peed, she had to get my stuff and make sure I wasn't too woozy, and then I was free to go. Dad drove home and that was awful, because, like I said, his driving is terrible and I was a grumpy teenager that just wanted to sleep, so I ended up snapping at my mom because she kept trying to like talk to me and pat me and stuff and I was like WHAT DO YOU WANT. I apologized profusely last night and this morning, but she totally got it. I stayed up a little bit once we got home, long enough to take some medication (Percocet and Tylenol, one for the pain and the other for the swelling and stuff) and check in with my friends to let them know I was okay, and to have some toast (BEST TOAST EVER). Then it was sleep time. I woke up every four hours all night to pee, which worked out because that was when I had to take more medication anyway.
Today I've been able to eat and drink just fine, and I'm a little sore. I've been telling everyone that it feels like I did a marathon of sit-ups. My belly is itchy, and one or two of my incisions is bleeding very slightly, but nothing that's a big deal. It's all to be expected. The weirdest thing is when they do surgery this way they fill you with gas so they can see, and it ends up giving you pain all up in your right chest and shoulder area, which even my doctor was like "It's weird but it happens to almost everyone, so don't worry about it, it won't last long."
So I've been half dozing all day since I got up, medicating, trying not to aggravate anything, though I can get up and move around and it's okay, I just don't want to piss anything off in the tum tum area lol. It looks like I'm going to have a lot of bruising which is natural and fine, especially for me because I bruise so easily. My belly itches but not where the incisions are, so that's okay.
Not sure when I'm going to go back to work, but I can't really do bending or lifting for a while so I don't even know what they'd want me to do.
But yeah, so it's all over and done with, amen, and the doctor said everything went beautifully. The tumor was growing not directly ON the ovary, but growing off a stalk that was on the ovary, which sounds gross haha but I think it made things easier for him to just cut it off and stitch it up. I have one other dissolvable stich inside of my belly button, because that's where the camera went in, ew.
I think it's nap time now ... I'm feeling mega tired. Zzzz haha. But it's all good and it's all done and now I just have to ~heal~. Woooo!
So here's how this all went down!
Tuesday I was on a clear liquids only diet, which wasn't too bad, except I had to drink 4 bottles of lemon-lime gatorade after I had to drink a bottle of lemon flavored magnesium citrate (LAXATIVE ALSKDJF). So I'm pretty over the whole lemon-lime flavor at this point lol. I also had to do an enema before bed; THAT WAS INTERESTING. I had to do one on Wednesday morning before we left for the hospital in New York, too, and Wednesday I couldn't eat or drink anything. I get really bad breath when I don't eat, apparently, so SORRY EVERYONE lol.
I drove up to the city so that I could stay calmer than I would as a passenger. It gave me something to concentrate on, plus my dad's driving is awful and it makes me and my mom severely car sick. So we got up there, got in, filled out paperwork, did a few tests, and honestly we only ended up waiting around for about an hour and a half before they brought me upstairs to the pre-op area to talk to the doctor and the anesthesiologist.
I like my doctor ... at first I wasn't sure what to think of him because he's very dry, but the more I saw him in appointments the more I liked him because he's very calming and soothing. He does the surgery nearly every day, more than once a day, so we were all really confident and comfortable with that. It was laparoscopic AND robotic, so it wasn't even like ... him doing it. They used robot arms! Kind of cool lol.
I was so nervous about being put under, but it ended up not being much of a big deal, thankfully. The anesthesiologist kept me talking so I was a little distracted, and I remember the last thing we talked about was Avenged Sevenfold LOL. Next thing I knew they were waking me up, asking me to scoot myself onto the gurney to go to the recovery room. It was really hard to wake up though, because honestly I was just still so tired ... the nurse had to keep telling me to take deep breaths to get my lungs re-inflated and my oxygen up. I felt so whiney because I was like "sorry I'm just so sleepy" lol like a grumpy teenager. They told my parents they could come in but the nurse didn't know they'd gotten permission so she yelled at them at first, something like "THIS GIRL IS 25!" and my mom was like "But they told us we could come in and she's our baby, and you know you always need your mom" and that somehow worked on the nurse lol. She ended up being really sweet and awesome.
You have to be able to pee before they let you go home, and I felt like I had to go but couldn't do it, so the nurse gave me some apple juice, and let me tell you, after two days of no food and an entire day without drinking, it was the best tasting juice I have ever had in my life. So once I peed, she had to get my stuff and make sure I wasn't too woozy, and then I was free to go. Dad drove home and that was awful, because, like I said, his driving is terrible and I was a grumpy teenager that just wanted to sleep, so I ended up snapping at my mom because she kept trying to like talk to me and pat me and stuff and I was like WHAT DO YOU WANT. I apologized profusely last night and this morning, but she totally got it. I stayed up a little bit once we got home, long enough to take some medication (Percocet and Tylenol, one for the pain and the other for the swelling and stuff) and check in with my friends to let them know I was okay, and to have some toast (BEST TOAST EVER). Then it was sleep time. I woke up every four hours all night to pee, which worked out because that was when I had to take more medication anyway.
Today I've been able to eat and drink just fine, and I'm a little sore. I've been telling everyone that it feels like I did a marathon of sit-ups. My belly is itchy, and one or two of my incisions is bleeding very slightly, but nothing that's a big deal. It's all to be expected. The weirdest thing is when they do surgery this way they fill you with gas so they can see, and it ends up giving you pain all up in your right chest and shoulder area, which even my doctor was like "It's weird but it happens to almost everyone, so don't worry about it, it won't last long."
So I've been half dozing all day since I got up, medicating, trying not to aggravate anything, though I can get up and move around and it's okay, I just don't want to piss anything off in the tum tum area lol. It looks like I'm going to have a lot of bruising which is natural and fine, especially for me because I bruise so easily. My belly itches but not where the incisions are, so that's okay.
Not sure when I'm going to go back to work, but I can't really do bending or lifting for a while so I don't even know what they'd want me to do.
But yeah, so it's all over and done with, amen, and the doctor said everything went beautifully. The tumor was growing not directly ON the ovary, but growing off a stalk that was on the ovary, which sounds gross haha but I think it made things easier for him to just cut it off and stitch it up. I have one other dissolvable stich inside of my belly button, because that's where the camera went in, ew.
I think it's nap time now ... I'm feeling mega tired. Zzzz haha. But it's all good and it's all done and now I just have to ~heal~. Woooo!