After a year of dealing with uterine fibroids, I evicted my uterus. First major surgery and first overnight in the hospital as a patient. We checked in at 5:30am for a 7:30 start time. This was my fourth surgery this year, so everything is very familiar. In fact, the nurse who came to the waiting room to take me back said, “You look familiar.” I guess it’s a bad sign when the nurses who see hundreds of patients, remember you. As usual, everyone was very nice and since I was the first case of the day, things ran right on time. Dr S waltzed in about 20 minutes before surgery time to check in. The nurse anesthetist, surgical nurse and the anesthesiologist all came by and gave the obligatory speech about all the scary things that could happen. Dr T, the anesthesiologist, checked my teeth like I was a horse and took my fingers to show me where a couple of my teeth were chipped so I didn’t blame him later.
At 7:30 on the dot, the NA came to get me and shot some happy making meds into my IV. In some surgeries, I have remembered at least the trip to the surgical bay, but she must have given me a good dose, because I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up afterwards and the nurse was taking me up to the maternity unit where I would stay overnight.
Jess and Dee Dee were both waiting for me, and shortly after I got into bed, my dad and his wife came by also. Even Dr S came by in the evening, though I wasn’t expecting to see her until the next morning. I found out that they spent the first 45 minutes just trying to intubate me. Hopefully I never need one in an emergency, because I’d probably end up getting a tracheotomy.
The only other trouble was getting the robot positioned. Apparently I’m a lot smaller than the people she normally works on so space was tight. In general, I find that hospitals definitely cater to the largest common denominator when it comes to people sizes. If aliens ever invade and all they find is U.S. hospitals, they’ll probably think our whole species is enormous.
The important part, which was getting my dang uterus out, went very smoothly. I came out of it with five holes in my stomach, a catheter and a lot of good drugs on board. My magic scopolamine patch kept any potential nasea from the pain medication at bay.
I took my first walk around my room in the early evening and another longer one to the nurse’s station in the middle of the night. I had heated blankets and morphine at the push of a button. In short, my hospital stay was quite pleasant. And both my day and night shift nurses were awesome.
Now, on my second day home, I’m walking around on my own, managing my pain well and being well taken care of by my nurse wife. Friends have dropped off at least four containers of soup (at temps below 30 outside, it’s great soup weather).
Tonight I was able to shower by myself and get dressed, including putting on my own socks. I’ll be shuffling around for a while, but it’s nice to know that my problems are fixed for good this time.
Thanks to all our friends who have sent well wishes, prayers, cat photos, offered to babysit and brought food. We’re terribly lucky to have you all in our lives.
I’ve Storified my tweets from my procedure which has a pretty good record of events.
After a year of dealing with uterine fibroids, I evicted my uterus. First major surgery and first overnight in the hospital as a patient.
http://storify.com/kronda/post-surgery-narc-tweets
This post is part of the thread: 2013 Battle With Fibroids – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.
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:phew: Glad that is over for you. Heal quickly!