November 15, 2015

• It's nothing...

  It’s been nine days since I underwent outpatient surgery to remove my gallbladder. A few days before the surgery, I posted on Facebook that I was feeling nervous and was treated to a chorus of “It’s nothing!... It’s a piece of cake!... You’ll bounce right back!...” and several variations of the same. I know my friends and family were trying to offer me encouragement, but nobody asked why I was feeling nervous and after all the different versions of, “It’s a nothing surgery,” I felt like my feelings had been dismissed as unfounded so I didn’t mention it again online. It was the same in the real world, with one or two exceptions, but I still found myself hesitant to mention why I was a bit on edge.  So now here I am nine days after surgery, and here’s what me bouncing back from a nothing surgery looks like.

  

  It was not a piece of cake. I did not bounce right back. I do not “have” this. It is, in fact, kicking my butt. Thank you for asking. Here’s the story nobody is interested in. You may as well just stop reading here.

  PRE-OPERATIVE

  Before the surgery, I was feeling nervous and anxious for all the usual reasons (going under general anesthesia, things that could go wrong, etc.), plus a few intensely personal reasons.

  • The date of my surgery was the anniversary of the death of a family member. She was on my heart from the day I scheduled the surgery. Her death was nothing to do with gallbladders or surgery, but it seemed like an unfortunate day to be going under the knife.
  • My grandmother died after gallbladder surgery, probably from a blood clot. She was in the process of being released from the hospital when she died.
  • I had an unfortunate history with abdominal surgery going into this one, so of course I was thinking about all the things that went wrong with my previous surgery and recovery.
  • I knew from my thyroid surgery in 2006 that it takes my body about a month to recover from general anesthesia and the trauma of surgery.

  THE DAY OF THE OPERATION

  • There were complications during the operation and it took twice as long as anticipated.
  • There were complications in the recovery room and I was there twice as long as anticipated.
  • There were complications back in the outpatient monitoring room and I was there longer than anticipated.
  • We should have been on our way home by around noon. I was finally released somewhere around 4 PM.

  POST-OPERATIVE

  • While the pain from the surgery itself is fading fairly quickly, I’ve had some severe spasms (think electric shock to your side that keeps jolting you for 20-30 minutes nonstop) that may indicate nerve damage.
  • I have a lovely rash below the incision site and another rash higher on my torso.
  • Almost every joint in my body aches, along with many muscles and a tendon or two. Even my scalp hurts. These, along with the rashes, may indicate a reaction to the antibiotic I was taking, even though some of them didn’t manifest until after I’d finished the prescription.

  I took an inventory of all my aches and pains last night, right after snapping that lovely selfie up there. I needed two columns to list everything, and it went from the top of my head (I don’t know why my scalp hurts, but it does), to the bottom of my left foot and stopped almost everywhere on the way down. In that picture, I am feeling pain in nearly every part of my body.

  In addition to the physical pain, I am depressed that I still feel so crappy and I can’t get back to my normal activities, and with all of the pain I’m already feeling, I’m nervous about eating normal foods. I’m getting really sick of applesauce and Jello and toast, but I’m afraid to eat more than one “normal” meal a day until I see how my body is going to handle those foods. So, I’m hungry and I’m cranky because I’m still eating applesauce instead of a sandwich or something. This morning I am going to attempt cereal. I drank a small cup of milk yesterday morning and had no ill effects from it, so today I’ll add the cereal and see what happens. Eating is like a game of Chutes and Ladders; I either climb up to the next level, or slide back to the beginning.

  I’m a very impatient patient. I want to get this behind me and get back to normal, but this, unfortunately, IS my normal reaction to surgery. Don’t worry, though; it’s nothing.

   

  • 10:32 am
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