What a difference a week can make...

A week ago today, I endured an eight hour road trip across the state with my husband and four kids, post surgery. The kids did awesome on the way home from Rochester. Our youngest never even left her car seat, and  our next oldest did only for a diaper change. They were very patient. I experienced bad motion sickness during the trip and ended up getting sick a few times on the way home. Every time I threw up my three year old would shout from the back "Momma puke?" and my older kids were so impressed that my throw up didn't stink... I guess I'm talented? :-)

Surgery went great. My surgeon said I was his easiest patient of the day and everything sounded like it went textbook. Thankfully, we didn't have to be at the hospital very early (8:00 a.m.) and we had a while to wait before they took me back for surgery (I think it was 10:30). I didn't wear my owl scarf (see previous blog), as I wasn't feeling very humorous that day... too nervous. There was only one point where I'd wished I had worn it. My anesthesiologist's name was Dr. Bacon and he pointed out I could remember his name by looking at the pictures of bacon which were on his scrub hat. At that time, I was wishing I could say, "And you can remember what procedure I'm having done by looking at my hat."

Speaking of my anesthesiologist, he had some great drugs, but I've never felt so much pain from an injection. As he injected the drug in my I.V. to put me to sleep, he said, "Now, some people say this stings a little..." and at that exact moment I felt this intense burning sensation spread from my I.V., up my arm and across about half of my body, before I was out. I still remember arching my body, clenching my fist and trying to breath thru the pain before the world went black.

When I came too, I just remember thrashing my legs in the bed from the pain and vocalizing that I was in pain over and over again. I remember hearing a nurse's voice tell me to hang in there as she was injecting my I.V. with some pain meds. I think I remember her giving me two injections before I could settle my body.

They transported me to my room, where they began giving me hourly doses of morphine. I think it was after the second dose, the nurse noticed a rash spread from my I.V. site. She deduced it must have been a reaction to the morphine. She was going to give me intravenous Benadryl, until I told her the issues I'd had with that during chemotherapy. I told her that my oncologist had had better luck with small doses of oral Benadryl. So she tried that, and within about 20-30 minutes I started to get more of a redness in face and sort of a panicky feeling (just like before I reacted to the intravenous Benadryl during chemotherapy), but it passed. I soon asked for more pain meds, so they decided to try Phentenol (sp?). It took the pain away, and the next hour the nurse gave me another dose. As I started relaxing and started to dose off, my O2 saturation monitor started going off. My O2 saturation had dropped significantly. I started feeling like my throat was beginning to close in, and my rash started spreading. More Benedryl, which pretty much made me super itchy and rashy all down my body. The decided they were going to have to cut me off the intravenous pain meds, as it was too risky considering how my body was reacting to them.

By this time, I had to pee... pretty bad. So the nurse and my husband tried to help me get out of bed, so I could go use the bathroom. I no sooner got the top half of my body upright, then I knew there was no way I was leaving that bed. I was in so much pain, I was sweating profusely and could hardly talk. So my option at that point was a bed pan... how humiliating... but not as humiliating as still managing to pee all over the sheets while trying to use the bed pan, which is what I managed to do. So now the nurse had to change sheets. I have no idea how long it took them to change sheets, but it felt like an eternity of rolling me from side to side... I was in so much pain I could not make a noise. I felt like I was in a torture chamber...it was horrible, but eventually, it did end. By this time, we were way behind on pain meds and the pain was bad. They gave me a dose of oral oxycodone, and an intravenous anti-anxiety med (I was pretty upset at this point), and I soon fell asleep. They kept me on a regular schedule of oral pain meds thru the night, and by morning I felt much better. I could finally slowly make my way to the restroom (thank goodness). And by mid-morning they had begun the process to check me out of the hospital. I was out by noon, I think. I went to my brother's place and rested for the remainder of the day and that night. And then we started our long trip home last Saturday.

It is amazing how much the human body can heal and recover in so little time. I could feel my body turn the corner by Tuesday evening and actually start feeling better. By Friday, I was off my prescription pain meds and only taking Ibuprofen as needed.

I go back to Mayo Clinic in September for a recheck and my first reconstruction expansion. It sounds like after that, my expansions can be done locally, which will be nice.