Well, I've survived the first few days post-op. My surgery was around 2:30pm on Friday, August 9th. I was INCREDIBLY anxious and tearful as we left my room for the pre-op area. I cried- I was nervous and scared- and at this point, who cared who knew it? Thanasi was great, I am so lucky to have him for a husband. The nursing staff was wonderful too- very soothing and supportive. As soon as we got down to the pre-op area they started all the pre-op "stuff," including my IV which they immediately gave me something to relax, which I will be forever grateful for. Apparently it worked pretty well, because I don't remember half of what went on in the pre-op area before Thanasi had to go into the waiting room and they wheeled me into the operating room. That's about all I remember until I woke up in recovery. I threw up a lot of blood looking stuff when I woke up, which freaked me out until my drug-fogged mind realized that that would be a normal thing after having this type of surgery. Then I fell asleep again. I woke up in my room a very short while later, and I was in mega-pain. I had a wicked migraine, my abdomen hurt, my mouth was dry and I was pleading for more drugs. Poor Thanasi- I remember it was hard for me to talk between the dry mouth and the tears, and I felt like I was practically screaming for more drugs. He finally left and got a nurse and they ended up injecting me with some kind of happy drug (probably morphine) and explained the morphine pump to me (another thing that I barely remember, things were happily getting pretty hazy). I was hooked up to a machine that gave me a steady dose of morphine through the IV, and I was able to push the booster button to give myself an extra "shot" of morphine every ten minutes (but it prevents you from accidentally overdosing). I was too out of it to find the button when I awoke in pain, so Thanasi stayed up a good part of that first night to push my morphine button for me. I am a VERY lucky woman!!!
The nurses woke me up pretty often during the night to give me breathing treatments, check my vitals, give me antibiotics, that sort of thing. Very nice people. Saturday morning came and I went for my swallow test- they unhooked me from all the machines (I said a tearful good-bye to the morphine pump), I was able to get out of bed and move to a wheelchair. They wheeled me down to where I had had the upper GI on Thursday and I had a sort of modified upper GI, called "the swallow test." I drank some stuff (not the barium I had had before, but something that tasted like nasty cough medicine), the guy took some X-rays (and gratefully allowed me to swish my mouth out with cold water as long as I promised not to actually drink it) and then wheeled me back up to my room. The nurse took the catheter out then since I proved that I was able to get up and around. I still couldn't drink (never mind eat) anything until Dr. Hargroder went over the films from my swallow test. My mouth was super dry by this point so I sucked on a wet face cloth until that evening when he came by and said my swallow test was fine- no leaks- and I could start having food- chicken broth, Jell-o, Crystal Light. My first real meal consisted of 2 ozs. of chicken broth, and it took me about 2 hours to eat it. Right before dinner I peed, all by myself (a huge accomplishment, I know). Saturday night was much the same as the night before with constant visits from nurses checking my vitals, giving me pain meds, hooking me up to the antibiotics, etc. I didn't have to have any breathing treatments overnight, since I had had them during the day and they had gone well. So Thanasi and I slept in between nurse's visits (which was okay, it gave us an excuse to nap during the day).