EdieMcGee
To make life a bit easier ...
Nov 13, 2007
... here's a link to my regular blog. I'm starting to get a lot of traffic as some fellow bloggers are linking to me now. So here's where I'll put my updates from now on.
http://oldladyslawoffice.blogspot.com/
http://oldladyslawoffice.blogspot.com/
D-day plus four -- the anatomy of suspected complications
Oct 13, 2007
It's amazing what a couple of nights at home in your own bed can do. The earlier part of this week seems like a bad dream now. Thankfully, all is well, but things were a bit dicier a few days back.
Everything started pretty uneventfully. When I got to Bayview on Tuesday morning, they had me ready to go within an hour, and since the OR was free, they got started an hour early. It was the usual stuff. The anesthesia team came by and asked lots of questions -- amazingly enough, the anesthesiologist is in the process of adopting from China!!! -- and got me prepped. Dr. S. came by with the informed consent, and I started to why lots of reviewers say he has a wicked sense of humor. The nurse anesthestists were trying to start an IV at the time he showed up. I have notoriously small, rolly-polly veins. They were on their 3rd attempt when Dr. S. came in and he chided them about that. Accommodating soul that I try to be, I told him that 3 tries was NOTHING, that it took 6 tries for the IV they inserted before my nose job. "Don't tell them that!!! You're just encouraging them!" he said, with a little false-horror on his face. It was priceless. We both had a good laugh.
Dr. S. went over the informed consent and told me I could expect to lose 50% of my excess weight, "statistically speaking," or something to that effect. I looked him in the eye and said, "I am not a statistic." He broke into a big grin at that point, and then they rolled me back.
I remember being settled on the table and Ron, one of the nurses, pushing a wedge under my knees and shoulders to keep my back comfortable. (Dr. S. had asked me about my back problems in front of them earlier.) The next thing I remember, Ron was shaking my shoulder and telling me I'd sailed through the surgery without any problem and it was 1:00 and they were going to transfer me to recovery. I remember being wheeled into there.
I woke up again at 2:30 and the nurse told me they were having trouble with my oxygen saturation levels. I was hovering around 87/88 with oxygen, and they wanted the mid-90's. They gave me an incentive spirometer. Finally, at about 6 p.m., they were able to transfer me to my room. And I learned I'd get nothing by mouth for another 12 hours. I desperately wanted chicken broth!!! And Jello!!! And water!!!!
They brought me water and a little sponge on a stick like we had to use to clean my dad's mouth out during his final illness when he couldn't eat. (He had had neurological problems and they didn't trust his swallowing mechanism.) My mom has cried and cried over having to use that little sponge on Daddy when he so desperately wanted to eat something. Well, I got a 12-hour taste of what Daddy experienced, and oh my! As the song goes, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then. Just to think about my dad living like that for the last four months of his life tears me up.
I had a roommate. Said roommate was suffering severe diabetes complications and was clearly in a great deal of pain. She told me she'd already lost a leg and was losing toes on the other foot. Since she wasn't obese or even appreciably overweight, I asked her if it was type 1 and she told me, no, she had type 2. Yikes!!! I saw what the future without weight loss surgery might have been and it wasn't pretty. However, to this lady, I was also obviously a child of a lesser god because she kept the frickin' TV on ALL night. And the light on her side. I could not sleep. Meanwhile, the nurses kept coming in and telling me to breathe because my pulse oxygen level was really low.
Finally, dawn broke and I got to eat and ate some yogurt and drank Crystal Light and water. Kevin showed up about 10 to pick me up and they told him I wasn't going anywhere. I hadn't been able to pee yet and they'd removed the Foley. Kevin got pretty upset about that because they'd told him the day before that I'd be ready to go by 10. Hell, I was upset, too. I made him go home. Meanwhile, I read over my release instructions and realized I wouldn't be driving for 3 weeks instead of one. I started freaking over that, because all the carpooling, etc. arrangement I'd made were for naught. I worried about what Madeline would think about my spending another night. I worried about Kevin being anxious over my not coming home.
Worse yet, I was just exhausted by the roommate's behavior the night before. Now, every time they came in to check on me, the roommatel would try to get the nurse over to her side for some minor complaint. So, here I was, thoroughly stressed out and feeling worse and worse, and I finally just started crying. My meltdown, however, got everyone's attention, and all of the sudden, my half of the room was filled with nurses, CNP's, residents, etc. Dr. S's main resident came to see me, too. Together we all figured out what to do. One of the CNP's told me that there was no way I'd be allowed to go home that day. In response, I told her she was going to have to call my husband and work things out with him, because he was upset and afraid. She did and was successful in her mission. As for all the other crap I sitting there crying about about (work, carpool obligations, etc.) they told me everyone would just have to understand, so I could stop worrying right now. And amazingly, I did.
One of the CNP's came back and told me Dr. S was concerned about things other than the lack of pee despite a dose of lasix (did I have congestive heart failure?).. First, I was burping a lot (so, had the band slipped already?). Second, my heart rate was speeding up and my blood gasses were still not good (did I have a blood clot or pneumonia?). Bottom line: I would have to spend the night and have some tests, and the *%(^ Foley would have to go back in.
As the nurses were reinstalling the Foley, Dr. S. peeked into my room and told me how sorry he was to put me through THAT again. (Fortunately, it wasn't really that bad, compared to having my nose packed after sinus surgery.) Pat, Dr. S's CNP, also came up and talked with me about fills and held my hand a bit. They put another IV in (Ana the nurse gets a gold star for getting it on the FIRST try!) and x-rayed my lungs. We went downstairs and did an upper GI and a CT scan of my heart and lungs with contrast. Fortunately, everything was okay!
The roommate was transferred out some time that afternoon. Phew!
At 5 or so, Kevin and Connie (my mother-in-law) walked into my room and asked if I'd like to see Madeline. Amber, the tech, came with a wheelchair to get me and wheeled me out to the lobby on the 6th floor, where my family was waiting. Kevin had really wanted Madeline to see that I was okay and asked the hospital to make it possible for her to see me beause she was too young to be allowed back in the rooms. He said when she got home from school on Wednesday and learned that I wasn't going to be home that night, she was inconsolable. Bayview gets high marks just for making the visit possible and helping me to keep family first.
I went back to my room and had dinner, then the respiratory therapist came to see me and I went to sleep. At 4:30 a.m., they brought in my new roommate, a woman from the ER with mystery chest pains. She soon found out I was on Vicodin and started bugging the nurses for pain meds. They wouldn't give them to her and she threatened to check herself out. Meanwhile, she talked nonstop on her cellphone and watched TV all night and into the day.
On Thursday morning, they took out the Foley, gave me more lasix and I performed the requisite toileting activity. I also got up and walked around a lot. By 10, they received the final reports from the studies and let me know they'd be cutting me lose that day. When Georgeanne, the CNP, gave the high sign, I called Kevin and he was there within the hour and I was safely home by 2:30.
The nurses kept checking my pulse ox level and making me walk until the end. In the process, we discovered that one machine they were using tested everyone's level low, including the nurse that was testing me. So, I suspect that the fact that the blood gas problem seemed to persist was in part machine failure. But, there was a real problem. My chest xray showed that my lungs were "wet," as though an infection was in the works. I think had this been the case on my pre-op x-ray they would have postponed the surgery. I was exposed to a sick kid last week. Thankfully, the fall-out of another parent's selfishness of having a child out in that condition was minor.
Things have gotten better and better since then. Bayview sent a home health nurse today, and she felt I was doing well. I'm more chipper and alert than I was after the gallbladder surgery, though every bit as sore, particularly at my port incision below my left breast. But I have no fever, my incisions look great and my blood sugar levels are PERFECT without meds.
So that's the whole ugly story.
Everything started pretty uneventfully. When I got to Bayview on Tuesday morning, they had me ready to go within an hour, and since the OR was free, they got started an hour early. It was the usual stuff. The anesthesia team came by and asked lots of questions -- amazingly enough, the anesthesiologist is in the process of adopting from China!!! -- and got me prepped. Dr. S. came by with the informed consent, and I started to why lots of reviewers say he has a wicked sense of humor. The nurse anesthestists were trying to start an IV at the time he showed up. I have notoriously small, rolly-polly veins. They were on their 3rd attempt when Dr. S. came in and he chided them about that. Accommodating soul that I try to be, I told him that 3 tries was NOTHING, that it took 6 tries for the IV they inserted before my nose job. "Don't tell them that!!! You're just encouraging them!" he said, with a little false-horror on his face. It was priceless. We both had a good laugh.
Dr. S. went over the informed consent and told me I could expect to lose 50% of my excess weight, "statistically speaking," or something to that effect. I looked him in the eye and said, "I am not a statistic." He broke into a big grin at that point, and then they rolled me back.
I remember being settled on the table and Ron, one of the nurses, pushing a wedge under my knees and shoulders to keep my back comfortable. (Dr. S. had asked me about my back problems in front of them earlier.) The next thing I remember, Ron was shaking my shoulder and telling me I'd sailed through the surgery without any problem and it was 1:00 and they were going to transfer me to recovery. I remember being wheeled into there.
I woke up again at 2:30 and the nurse told me they were having trouble with my oxygen saturation levels. I was hovering around 87/88 with oxygen, and they wanted the mid-90's. They gave me an incentive spirometer. Finally, at about 6 p.m., they were able to transfer me to my room. And I learned I'd get nothing by mouth for another 12 hours. I desperately wanted chicken broth!!! And Jello!!! And water!!!!
They brought me water and a little sponge on a stick like we had to use to clean my dad's mouth out during his final illness when he couldn't eat. (He had had neurological problems and they didn't trust his swallowing mechanism.) My mom has cried and cried over having to use that little sponge on Daddy when he so desperately wanted to eat something. Well, I got a 12-hour taste of what Daddy experienced, and oh my! As the song goes, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then. Just to think about my dad living like that for the last four months of his life tears me up.
I had a roommate. Said roommate was suffering severe diabetes complications and was clearly in a great deal of pain. She told me she'd already lost a leg and was losing toes on the other foot. Since she wasn't obese or even appreciably overweight, I asked her if it was type 1 and she told me, no, she had type 2. Yikes!!! I saw what the future without weight loss surgery might have been and it wasn't pretty. However, to this lady, I was also obviously a child of a lesser god because she kept the frickin' TV on ALL night. And the light on her side. I could not sleep. Meanwhile, the nurses kept coming in and telling me to breathe because my pulse oxygen level was really low.
Finally, dawn broke and I got to eat and ate some yogurt and drank Crystal Light and water. Kevin showed up about 10 to pick me up and they told him I wasn't going anywhere. I hadn't been able to pee yet and they'd removed the Foley. Kevin got pretty upset about that because they'd told him the day before that I'd be ready to go by 10. Hell, I was upset, too. I made him go home. Meanwhile, I read over my release instructions and realized I wouldn't be driving for 3 weeks instead of one. I started freaking over that, because all the carpooling, etc. arrangement I'd made were for naught. I worried about what Madeline would think about my spending another night. I worried about Kevin being anxious over my not coming home.
Worse yet, I was just exhausted by the roommate's behavior the night before. Now, every time they came in to check on me, the roommatel would try to get the nurse over to her side for some minor complaint. So, here I was, thoroughly stressed out and feeling worse and worse, and I finally just started crying. My meltdown, however, got everyone's attention, and all of the sudden, my half of the room was filled with nurses, CNP's, residents, etc. Dr. S's main resident came to see me, too. Together we all figured out what to do. One of the CNP's told me that there was no way I'd be allowed to go home that day. In response, I told her she was going to have to call my husband and work things out with him, because he was upset and afraid. She did and was successful in her mission. As for all the other crap I sitting there crying about about (work, carpool obligations, etc.) they told me everyone would just have to understand, so I could stop worrying right now. And amazingly, I did.
One of the CNP's came back and told me Dr. S was concerned about things other than the lack of pee despite a dose of lasix (did I have congestive heart failure?).. First, I was burping a lot (so, had the band slipped already?). Second, my heart rate was speeding up and my blood gasses were still not good (did I have a blood clot or pneumonia?). Bottom line: I would have to spend the night and have some tests, and the *%(^ Foley would have to go back in.
As the nurses were reinstalling the Foley, Dr. S. peeked into my room and told me how sorry he was to put me through THAT again. (Fortunately, it wasn't really that bad, compared to having my nose packed after sinus surgery.) Pat, Dr. S's CNP, also came up and talked with me about fills and held my hand a bit. They put another IV in (Ana the nurse gets a gold star for getting it on the FIRST try!) and x-rayed my lungs. We went downstairs and did an upper GI and a CT scan of my heart and lungs with contrast. Fortunately, everything was okay!
The roommate was transferred out some time that afternoon. Phew!
At 5 or so, Kevin and Connie (my mother-in-law) walked into my room and asked if I'd like to see Madeline. Amber, the tech, came with a wheelchair to get me and wheeled me out to the lobby on the 6th floor, where my family was waiting. Kevin had really wanted Madeline to see that I was okay and asked the hospital to make it possible for her to see me beause she was too young to be allowed back in the rooms. He said when she got home from school on Wednesday and learned that I wasn't going to be home that night, she was inconsolable. Bayview gets high marks just for making the visit possible and helping me to keep family first.
I went back to my room and had dinner, then the respiratory therapist came to see me and I went to sleep. At 4:30 a.m., they brought in my new roommate, a woman from the ER with mystery chest pains. She soon found out I was on Vicodin and started bugging the nurses for pain meds. They wouldn't give them to her and she threatened to check herself out. Meanwhile, she talked nonstop on her cellphone and watched TV all night and into the day.
On Thursday morning, they took out the Foley, gave me more lasix and I performed the requisite toileting activity. I also got up and walked around a lot. By 10, they received the final reports from the studies and let me know they'd be cutting me lose that day. When Georgeanne, the CNP, gave the high sign, I called Kevin and he was there within the hour and I was safely home by 2:30.
The nurses kept checking my pulse ox level and making me walk until the end. In the process, we discovered that one machine they were using tested everyone's level low, including the nurse that was testing me. So, I suspect that the fact that the blood gas problem seemed to persist was in part machine failure. But, there was a real problem. My chest xray showed that my lungs were "wet," as though an infection was in the works. I think had this been the case on my pre-op x-ray they would have postponed the surgery. I was exposed to a sick kid last week. Thankfully, the fall-out of another parent's selfishness of having a child out in that condition was minor.
Things have gotten better and better since then. Bayview sent a home health nurse today, and she felt I was doing well. I'm more chipper and alert than I was after the gallbladder surgery, though every bit as sore, particularly at my port incision below my left breast. But I have no fever, my incisions look great and my blood sugar levels are PERFECT without meds.
So that's the whole ugly story.
This is IT!!!!!!!!
Oct 08, 2007
The day has arrived! I woke up almost hourly last night, so I'm feeling groggy. Just put together my daughter's backpack and lunch and am sitting down to write out some phone numbers and the like for Kevin.
D-day minus one
Oct 08, 2007
Here, we are at 10:30 p.m. the night before. Since my surgeon does not do a pre-op diet, I just ate a couple of slices of semolina bread and drank a big glass of water. That was on top of a lovely, healthy dinner of chicken breast, rice and green beans with pineapple sherbert for dessert. I have a huge stomach capacity, unfortunately, from years of major pig-outs in my late teens (when I actually burned 4000 calories a day) and my early 20's (when I didn't). But, I am concerned about being hungry in the morning and not even being able to drink water. My surgery isn't until almost noon. Going that long without food is rough on me. I'm a breakfast person!
Madeline's school was off today, and as a Fed, I was off, too, so we spent the day doing errands. Then, I came home and did as much cleaning as I could until it was time for dinner. Had a little time with the hubby after the kid was in bed. Hubby is off to bed now. I'm staying up until mid-night and drinking water. Want to be well-hydrated. I'm also ironing as the child will need school clothes later in the week.
I'm not nervous yet, or at least I'm not admitting it to myself. Hubby is more nervous. My mom is truly terrified. What can I say? She was also scared of my going to China when we adopted Madeline. On an intellectual level, I know I'm being operated on by the best. I'm in good hands tomorrow and I know it. And that feels good. But there's more than that. I'm sort riding along on this wave of love. I have so many friends ... on OH, on the various China forums I participate in, at my daughter's school, at our church, in my extended family. I'm hearing from these people today and have been for the past week. It's amazing, heartening. I feel so ... lifted by the love and the prayers and the messages of support. It's humbling to think about it. It makes me cry.
Madeline's school was off today, and as a Fed, I was off, too, so we spent the day doing errands. Then, I came home and did as much cleaning as I could until it was time for dinner. Had a little time with the hubby after the kid was in bed. Hubby is off to bed now. I'm staying up until mid-night and drinking water. Want to be well-hydrated. I'm also ironing as the child will need school clothes later in the week.
I'm not nervous yet, or at least I'm not admitting it to myself. Hubby is more nervous. My mom is truly terrified. What can I say? She was also scared of my going to China when we adopted Madeline. On an intellectual level, I know I'm being operated on by the best. I'm in good hands tomorrow and I know it. And that feels good. But there's more than that. I'm sort riding along on this wave of love. I have so many friends ... on OH, on the various China forums I participate in, at my daughter's school, at our church, in my extended family. I'm hearing from these people today and have been for the past week. It's amazing, heartening. I feel so ... lifted by the love and the prayers and the messages of support. It's humbling to think about it. It makes me cry.
