Good morning, it feels strange to be sitting down and typing. I know it’s only been a few days since I was last here posting my thoughts, my workouts, my research and more, but it’s been a very long few days for me. For those of you who read my blogs regularly, you know that I was scheduled for surgery just three days ago. The surgery was exploratory in nature, designed to go in and examine the mass they found on my right ovary.
The last few weeks had given me plenty of time to think ahead to the surgery and to plan my life around this week. I spent a great deal of time working on getting the house in order and spending a lot of time with my daughter. The pain that sent me to the doctor in the first place increased over the intervening weeks, so much so that after my surgery – I felt a great deal better and that was without a new round of painkillers.
The Surgery
Monday morning, I went to the hospital and was admitted. I went to the A.M. Surgery Unit and got into the lovely gown that makes muumuus look good and then settled in with my Sherrilyn Kenyon book to wait for the physicians and more. I was in a lot of pain because there were no painkillers allowed, no food, no drink and nothing for at least 12 hours beforehand.
But soon they came, set up my I.V.s and then gave me the medication to knock me out. I woke up more than 4 hours later in the recovery room and I could barely put two thoughts together. I hurt. My sides hurt. My throat hurt terribly (I’d been intubated) and I was extremely groggy. The doctor came to talk to me briefly, but the gist was they’d removed my right ovary and fallopian tube – the mass was apparently much larger than they’d expected and they’d gotten all of the tissue. They’d also performed a cystectomy on my left ovary.
Recuperating
It will still be a few days before the biopsy is complete. When I got home from the surgery, I went straight to sleep. I spent most of Monday afternoon and night sleeping off the anesthesia. I was feeling pretty good on Tuesday, still not taking a lot of painkillers – because by comparison to the pain I’d been in before the surgery, the post-surgery pain was not a lot.
The doctor called to check on me and he indicated that I was in a great deal more pain than I’d told them and since I’ve always had a high tolerance for pain, I can’t say he was wrong. Yesterday, I relapsed a bit – I pushed too hard on Tuesday, so yesterday, I spent the day comfortably ensconced in a chair, watching episodes of Law & Order, Alias, CSI Miami and Charmed as well as my soaps (General Hospital being my favorite at the moment) and reading the latest J.D. Robb.
My day was broken up into parts – 30 minutes awake, 2 hours napping, so forth and so on. I’m going to continue to take it easy today, but I’ve missed writing for all of you here and dropping in my thoughts. So I’m going to use my 30-minute increments to drop you notes both here and in the Marriage blog.
So welcome to March – I hope you didn’t miss me too much!
Related Articles:
Dear Heather … How Are You Coping with Your Medical Problems?
Update: My Ordeal & What the Doctor Said