Surgery went very well last Wednesday! Sorry for the delayed update, but I was out of town for the holiday.
We got to the hospital just before 9:30 in the morning and went straight back. They immediately started an IV to start pumping IV fluids into me. The nurse actually managed to get the IV in with 1 stick, but of course she had to wiggle the needle around so most of my right hand is bruised... The IV pump then didn't want to work and kept beeping at us, but eventually we got it to go smoothly with some repositioning of tape and my wrist. The anestheologist came in and we talked for a long time about all of my conditions. He was intrigued and wanted to hear all about them! He said I was the most interesting patient he has had in a month or more :) He was very sweet and shortly after then my surgeon came in and asked if we had any questions. Well off we went to the OR.
In the OR they got me situated on the operating table, turned up the temperature because I felt like an icicle where the IV fluids were going in, and administered the sedation. I did not go under general anesthesia so that they did not need to assist in my breathing and there was not as much strain put on my body. Everything went well until about ten minutes before the operation was over when I woke up... That was not supposed to happen! It was ok though, I was just laying there and then asked "Am I supposed to be awake yet?" I think that gave them a slight fright! The anesthesiologist popped his head under the sheet that was covering my head and talked to me through the rest of the operation. It was actually pretty cool because the surgeon then talked to me about what he was doing. They also were able to ask me if I could feel what they were doing and if I was in pain, so they were able to give me more numbing medication the one time I said that I felt what they were doing. They explained how the catheter had a kink in it so he was going to take it out and re-thread it through my vein and then talked me through how he was closing up.
I was then taken back to recovery and given another 2 liters of fluids and was discharged around 3 in the afternoon. I was not in much pain and was doing very well in recovery. My fiance went to the pharmacy during this time to pick up a pain killer just in case as well as an anti-nausea medication because I tend to get extremely sick to my stomach with anesthesia. We then got on the road at about 4 and headed down to Cincinnati to spend the holiday with family.
Thursday was the worst day for me. It hurt to move my arm at all and I was in a fair amount of pain. Thankfully by Friday I was feeling much better and by Saturday was just a little sore. I have two incisions from this surgery: one on the upper right side of my chest and one on the right side of my neck. Because of the incision on my neck it hurt to turn my neck, but today (Sunday) that is feeling much better. I took the large bandage off on Friday and some of the steristrips (small pieces of tape over the incision) off this morning. I now have 2 steristrips on the incision on my chest and one on my neck that I will leave on for a few more days. I have some bruising on my chest where they put the actual port, but even that is not too bad. Hopefully we will be able to start accessing the port shortly! I will post another update with the rest of the new medical stuff that has happened this week later today or sometime early this week. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!
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