My Lap Experience

Yesterday I was mostly okay. Hungry on and off, but nothing I couldn't handle. This morning I was miserable. For some unfathomable reason we had to be at the hospital two hours before surgery. Shortly after I got there they dressed me in the hospital gown, robe, and slippers, took my blood pressure, asked a few questions, gave me a blanket, and sent me back to the waiting room to wait for almost two more hours. I had a headache that was bordering on a migraine and I had to rush to the bathroom to throw up bile three or four times. And I was freezing but having occasional hot flashes. I put my head on K's shoulder and tried to sleep. I think I managed to doze for a while.

Finally they came and got me and I couldn't wait for them to knock me out. I remember the IV going in, then looking around waiting to feel groggy or something, and then I was gone. When I woke up I was incredibly thirsty and shivering hard under a heated blanket. Once the shivering was over and I was a little more awake, I actually felt okay — definitely better than I had pre-op.

They moved me to recovery, gave me water, and K came to see me. He told me the results: apparently they removed some endo. Just a bit from two spots. I was not expecting that! I thought there would be some scar tissue, and we actually got conflicting reports on that. Dr. L told K there was no scar tissue, but when his assistant stopped by to go over the results with me she said they removed a small band of scar tissue. She also said they were expecting to see a polyp and there wasn't one. Um, I didn't know we suspected polyps. Weird. I'm supposed to go for a follow-up with Dr. L in about four weeks.

Anyway, they told me to sleep, and K went away, but I couldn't sleep. It was loud in there and I had to pee. Finally I got a nurse's attention and she took me to the bathroom. One of my fears going in was that I wouldn't be able to pee afterwards (there'd been a couple of recent posts about that on the Nest), but I had no problem. The nurse even seemed impressed by how much I went. LOL Also, there was a lot of blood from, the nurse said, moving my uterus around. Ew.

By the time K came back I still hadn't slept, so they discharged me and we took a cab home. We were at the hospital from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and poor K was there the whole time, bless his bored little heart, mostly doing Sudoku puzzles on the Nintendo DS. I ate some toast when we got home (which made me very full) and had a nap from 6:30 to 8:00. I have some tenderness in my abdomen and pain at my incision sites, a sore throat (probably from a breathing tube, although I have no memory or knowledge of one), and a bit of shoulder pain from the carbon dioxide they used to expand my abdomen during the surgery. So far I've taken one Tylenol 3. Overall, I'm feeling surprisingly okay.

Well! That account turned out to be way more detailed than I was expecting. I highlighted the results in blue in case anyone got bored and just wanted to get to the meat of the matter. :)