Post-Op Update

Well I am home recovering from my surgery. It went well. I am feeling good considering what they did to me :) My incision sites are sore and I have a lot of tissue gas pain that is sometimes in my shoulder, sometimes my back, sometimes my abdomen (from the carbon dioxide that they pumped me up with for the surgery) but hopefully I'll be feeling back to normal soon.

Surgery was a new experience for me so I thought I'd share how the whole experience was...

I got to the day surgery center at 6:00 am. They had me change into a gown and booties, they started my IV, nurses talked to me, etc. Then Jake got there (he had dropped off the kids with the lady from our ward who was so nice tend them-they had a lot of fun at her house) to be with me in my room for a little bit before they took me back to surgery. Then the OR nurse came and put a hair cover over my head, she told Jake they would take good care of me and then she wheeled my bed down a few halls to the Operating Room. That ride through the halls was such a weird feeling. It seemed like I was watching a movie of the person being pushed through the hall going into surgery. I couldn't believe it was me. When I got in the OR there were a lot of big lights and TV screens and medical equipment. It was still such a surreal feeling. They moved me onto the operating table, strapped my legs to the table so that I didn't fall off, I looked around for a bit and then that's the last thing I remember from that room....

The next thing I knew I was groggily waking up and was breathing through an oxygen mask. It was the strangest feeling. Anesthesia isn't like sleeping where you dream and such, it's like one minute you are doing something and the next minute you are somewhere else doing something else, and you know time has passed but you have no recollection of it. It is just so weird! There were a couple nurses around me talking, monitoring my vitals. I felt some soreness in my abdomen so I figured the surgery was over and I was waking up. I kind of drifted off and on and then they took me back to my room where Jake was. After my surgery my surgeon had gone and talked to Jake and told him that all went well and some aftercare advice.

Back in my recovery room they let me rest for little bit and then they had me up and walking a couple laps around the hall. My legs felt really weak at first from the anesthesia, but then it felt good to be up and around. I rested a little more and then it was time to go home.

On the way home we stopped at the grocery store to fill my pain med prescription and get some groceries. I was walking around slowly holding onto Jake's arm, wearing my sweat suit, no make-up, kind of messy hair, and still wearing my yellow "Fall Risk" wrist band. People were probably wondering what just happened to me and what I was doing there. I'm sure I looked lovely :) It actually felt good to be up and about though.

So now it's been a couple of days. Getting in and out of bed is tough, bending down is tough and I have to dodge the Braelyn lap jumps and the Dal power hugs. I am feeling pretty good though. I think the most pain has been coming from that gas that is still in my tissues. I've heard that's the worst part of gall bladder surgery recovery. And the incisions will take some time to heal too. So house cleaning is going to have to be on hold for a little while, but I think we'll survive. As long as recovery continues well, I won't miss any of my classes (because my main professor was out of town the last couple days so we listened to class via podcast on the internet) and I will hopefully only miss one clinical day (tomorrow) and can make that up over Spring Break. So that worked out nice.

Jake has been a Superman and has been doing a wonderful job picking up the slack and taking care of the kids and I, all while feeling tired and in pain himself. He has made me some amazing soups, has kept the kids fed and happy with plenty of playtime and has kept the house from totally falling apart. He is amazing and I am so grateful for him!

Surgery Here I Come

Well my semester is fully underway with multiple exams every week, study time and clinical days. Dal continues to enjoy school and we all enjoy our Friday family fun nights, FHE, going to the park, kids museum, and any other little family time we can get.

I guess our life needed a little bit more excitement though because in the last several months I have had a few episodes of excruciating upper abdominal pain. The pain was so intense it felt like I was in labor, having one major contraction that I didn't get a break from for a couple of hours. I could hardly breathe. The last episode I had was in January and it was late at night and I almost went to the ER but luckily I found some leftover Loritab from when I had Braelyn. It took the edge off the pain enough for me to not have Jake get the kids out of bed and take a family trip to the ER. By this point though I knew that something was definitely wrong.

In my self-diagnosing internet research I determined that it was something with my gall bladder, probably gall stones. So I set an appointment with a GI doctor and when he came in the room I hardly got two sentences out before he said it was probably my gall bladder and I needed to have an ultrasound. Prior to my ultrasound I watched a you tube video of a gall bladder ultrasound so that I would know what stones looked like on the ultrasound. The ultrasound lady showed me the gall bladder and sure enough there were a bunch of glowing white stones on the ultrasound. Usually they aren't supposed to say anything until the Dr. looks at it but she told me that I have multiple gall stones. I was not at all surprised. I was bummed because I knew surgery would be the recommendation yet at the same time I was relieved knowing what had caused my horrible pain.

A little picture of a gall bladder with stones

So of course the doctor recommended surgery. I did some research on it and other possible options. Some people choose to use natural remedies or not-so-natural remedies to try to remove the stones on their own. The problem with those it seems is that the stones will most likely keep on coming back and you have to continue to deal with them. The cause of stones varies but it can be genetics (which are definitely against me because my mom and both grandma's have had their gall bladders removed) the good old hormones estrogen and progesterone (which is why gall stones are so much more common in women especially recently after having a baby) and other things. Looking at some of the possible causes made me realize that if I didn't have surgery I would probably always have to deal with gall bladder issues. The kicker for me though was the complications that can occur if you don't have surgery. A stone can get stuck in the bile duct and cause a major infection or it can get stuck in the pancreas and cause pancreatitis, which can lead to a lot of very serious problems. The Dr. also explained to me that after you have your gall bladder removed your body kind of compensates and part of your small intestines almost forms a little sac (like a mini gall bladder) to hold a little extra bile.

So we decided that surgery would be the best option. I am really nervous because I have never had surgery before (aside from wisdom teeth removal). It seems so weird that they are going to be removing one of my organs and then hope that my body adjusts and functions normally (which for many people it does). I am going to have the laparoscopic surgery which is the less invasive one. The surgeon will make 3-4 small incisions, I will be blown up with carbon dioxide gas and then he will use a mini-scope to see inside and other instruments to clip off and pull out the gall bladder. When the surgeon was explaining it and when I watched a you tube animation of it it seemed pretty freaky to me! I feel a little better knowing my surgeon has a reputation for being the best on the city and he does 200-300 of these surgeries a year.

This is where the incisions will be made

This is where the scope goes in and some of the other instruments

So I am scheduled for surgery this Wednesday at 8:00 am. A nice lady from church offered to watch the kids so that Jake can be there with me when I wake up. We are praying that all will go well and that I recover quickly because in my program it would be really hard to miss hardly any school or clinical days. So surgery here I come!

I couldn't leave a blog post without throwing in a couple cute pics of the kids so...

The kids hiding place during a game of hide and seek

My good-bye party before I head out the door to school

Braelyn gives me the cutest little sad hugs when I leave and then she gives me the most energetic and excited hugs when I get home :)