Thursday, June 8, 2023
Issues
- When I woke up this morning.....or really let's be honest I barely slept from all the itching all night......Mom got here to take over babysitting me and Sean left for work. The itching was insane and I read online that Percocet and similar drugs can cause those types of reactions in people. Mom jumped to the rescue and ran to the store immediately (at 6:30 am lol) and got me Benadryl Liquigels. Oh my god they helped immensely.
Oh and side note, I had the compression socks torn off me in the middle of the night due to the itchiness so I never made it as far as keeping them on until the first follow up. Because of this I tried to make sure I was doing lots of leg exercises as often as I could (ankle circles etc).
- I noticed yesterday (but was pretty drugged up so didn't think much of it) that my left arm whenever I would reach for anything (reach for the remote, reach to flush the toilet, reach to open the door...literally any time I straightened my arm, I would get an instant electric jolt from my inner elbow to about halfway down my arm (as shown by my lovely artists rendering below). It was a searing, massive pain and was instant and then gone almost as quick as it came but it was almost unbearable. Doing some Dr. Google research (because I'm awesome like that) I end up finding out this is called a "stinger" or "burner". This can happen for many many reasons but one of these is if the nerve is touched when an IV is being put in so I can only assume that is what has caused it. I am putting ice on it and attempting to NOT straighten it but that's easier said than done.
- My lower back is also killing me, I think from using my back muscles to essentially hold my body in this hunched over position. You really don't realize how much your abs do until they can't, Jesus.
- I sneezed......yep, this is listed under issues because nobody warned me that if I sneezed it would feel like I ripped EVERY SINGLE STITCH out of my abdomen. I can't recall pain like that and I screamed so loud I think I terrified my husband. The instant searing pain hurt so bad I started to cry.......NOOOOOOO you cannot do that either. Apparently, laughing, crying, coughing, sneezing.....pretty much EVERYTHING we do has some affect on or is affected by our abs.......I could not cry either and so I instantly tried to calm myself with HUGE deep breaths but trust me it was soooooo hard to do with that level of pain. I researched after and found that if you need to cough or sneeze you need to grab a pillow and brace it against your abdomen and bend forward as much as you can pushing the pillow into your abdomen to cushion it a bit. Every time I felt like I would sneeze I grabbed my nose with my fingers and plugged it to stop myself, which worked but man......just know if you sneeze or cough you will regret it lol.
I am typing this all on June 20 and can say that it took about two full weeks before I was able to laugh, cry, cough or sneeze without the massive pain......still not comfortable but doesn't feel like the stitches are being ripped out at least.
Medications and Drains
I continued with the 2 Percocet and checking my drains every four hours. Once I reason out of the Percocet (they only sent me home with 10), I switched to 2 Teva Emtec at my regular intervals. This is essentially the same as Tylenol 3 with codeine but T3s also have caffeine which the Teva doesn't.
Food and Drinks
I continued with my gatorade and slept most of the day away on the couch. I finally had some chicken noodle soup for dinner once Sean was home.
Friday, June 9, 2023
Today was my first follow up at the surgeon's office. Sean and I had to be there for my appointment at 8am. I was relatively sore but we took my SUV as it was easiest for me to get in and out of and now that we knew where to park it was a piece of cake.
When we got to the office, I was taken into the office by the lovely Patty once more. She asked how things were going and said she was going to check my bandages etc.
Happy I once more wore my super stretchy pants and zip up hoodie. She pulled my pants down so she could undo the abdominal binder. When she did I could now see the abdominal pad covering the incisions, the drain insertion point on either side of my vagina and.......well just the simple fact that my freakin stomach was gone......
.......this is weird.......
She used a Q-tip to clean out some dried blood in my belly button and showed me how to replace the 4"x4" IV drain sponges and put a new abdominal pad on and then showed me how to redo my abdominal binder which has three parts:
- A goes kind of around your lower butt area and gets done up first
- B gets done up second and going over top of A but slightly lower so over your upper hips and thee drain insertion points.
- C gets done up last and is the highest - she called it the crown - and it keeps the upper abdomen compressed as the abdominal sutures internally need to be help in place with the compressions bandage
Then the two drains get safety pinned to the top of C to hold them on so they aren't dangling around. Below is a shot of what it looks like all done up.
Patty advised that I could start showing tomorrow, which the thought of is scary as all hell truth be told.
She suggested I ensure Sean is close by in case the standing up or the warm water or any combination of things makes me feel faint.....or makes me actually faint lol.
She said that this is where I put on my lanyard (that was mentioned previously in the prepping post) and pin the drains to the lanyard with the safety pins.
Stand with my back to the water - not too hot - and let the water run down my back and over my front but don't turn around and completely saturate the wound....just enough water and time to "freshen up".
She gave me a handful of abdominal pads (maybe 6 or 7) and said that I change them when I shower (so she gave me more than enough) and also gave me two packages of the 4"x4" IV drain sponges.....you might recall in my previous post this is the item I had to order more of on Amazon so ask for MORE of these. My drains where they are inserted leaked twice.....both on this day so I went through both packages she gave me on the same day and thee had no more left......hence the requirement to order more.
She advised that Dr. Edwards was away next week (June 12-16) but that I would come see him the following week n June 20th.
Issues
As mentioned, my drains started leaking at the insertion point today on two different occasions. This was a bit scary as all of a sudden I could feel my Pajamas were wet on my upper thighs so I thought I was bleeding.
Once I realized I wasn't, I cleaned myself up and very gingerly (with washed hands) touched the drain at the insertion spots and soooooo gently pushed them upward back into the incisions to make sure they were in there properly. Then I put on the new drain sponges, put the abdominal pad back on and did my abdominal binder back on.
Medications and Drains
At the follow up appointment I had asked Patty about doing the drains every 4 hours and if I was sleeping how imperative it was to do and she said "ohhhhhh no. Only do them every 4 hours if you're awake. If you're sleeping SLEEP!! get all the rest you can, set your alarm to wake up just to take your meds but don't get up out of bed to do the drains, rest as much as possible!" Well that was awesome news.
Bad news was that the drains would be in for a FEW WEEKS. I guess because I had my drains out in 2 days after my weight loss surgery I never realized this would be a lot longer. Sigh......
As I had mentioned before you have to have them in until there is less than 25 ml is a 24 hour period for 3 days straight. So my Type-A brain pushed me to redo my drain tracker spreadsheet so I could see at a glance how much output there was every 24 hours.
I went with 12 pm to 12 pm as my 24 hour period and would then use the next space to add up the totals of all of my drain checks between that period and then highlight it in green. As you can see my right side has significantly more output than the left side.
I continued with the 2 Teva's every four hours but now knew I didn't have to get up out of bed in the middle of the night to check my drains so I would just wake up, ask Sean to hand me my meds and a drink and go back to sleep, checking and tracking the drain output once I woke up in the morning.
I continued with my Gatorade and had some eggs and toast today. I am also continuing with the one Senekot every night before bed and that had seriously helped......no straining so far because god I don't think I could handle it.
There is truly no point in me going through EVERY day lol because right now all of it is much the same and the day before.......sleep, take drugs, check drains, repeat.......over and over.....so what I will do is point out or mention some of the changes or things I think are good for you to know.
Medications and Drains
By Saturday I was starting to wean myself off the painkillers and so was down to 1 Teva every 4 hours. On Sunday I pushed it a bit further to 6 hours but by bedtime I was quite sore and had to then take two before going to sleep so I think I was a bit to gung ho on extending it to six and I could definitely feel the difference.
Having said that I still tried to space them further and further out to wean myself off of them. On Monday, June 12th I took a pill at 11:30 pm before bed and managed to make it to 9:30 pm on Tuesday, June 13th before the next one so a full 22 hours and then I took the next one at 9:45 pm on Wednesday, June 14th so that's a full 24 hours and 15 minutes.
By this point I was "sore" but not so sore as to need any of the narcotics throughout the day, pretty much just taking them to allow me to be comfortable enough to sleep.
Next up........Week two
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