Like the beach, only worse

Eyes fluttered open.  Pain.  Which means I'm alive.  But I'm in pain and immobile and flat on my back.  I lay there in recovery, not moving, waiting for a nurse to come over.  She asks me what my pain level is, and I tell her it's a 9.  She says that's too high and I have to wait for it to come down.  Eyes close again.

I wake, not sure how much longer later.  I notice I have not one but two i.v.s, one in my right hand and one on my left arm.  The nurse stops by again, asks my pain level.  I again, tell her it's a 9.  She again tells me it's too high, though she informs me that my hair looks amazing.  I'm not kidding.  She tells me that it looks like I could walk out and go to a club, and that hair never looks that good post op.  Not caring, I pass back out.

When I wake the third time, I again get seen by the nurse.  I ask how soon I can get out of recovery and up to my room to see my family, and she says, "..when your pain level decreases," at which point she asks it.  I tell her it's a 6 (it was still a 9) just so I could get transferred up to a room.  She calls for transport, and I'm on the move.

As I get wheeled on my bed into the elevator, I notice we are headed to the fifth floor.  Normally I've been on the second floor when I've had surgery with Dr. Lee, and I'm not quite sure why we're headed that much further up.  Once on the floor, I'm wheeled into a room much like Surgical Step Down at Vassar, with a nurses station in the center, 24 hour care, and 5 or 6 bed slots.  As I'm being wheeled in the door, I feel my catheter bag get caught on the door, so I let out a bit of a yelp.  The guy wheeling me asks what's going on, and I told him, and he rearranges my bed and tells me not to worry, that it wouldn't really have pulled out.  Easy for him to say, he didn't feel the tug of the line as it got caught on the door frame.  But I got placed into slot 4, and soon thereafter, in walk Mom, Dad, Aunt Donna, and Joe.  What a welcome sight.

All ask how I'm doing, and are happy to see I've come out of it okay.  I ask where I am, and I'm told by my nurse Rich that I'm in the spinal trauma unit.  Normally if I was on a different pain medication, I'd be on a different floor, but since they had me on ketamine and phentanol, the ketamine had to have continuous monitoring for the first 24 hours that it's being put into my veins.  My 'neighbor' in bed slot #5 is Amish.  His parents came in from Michigan because of his spinal injury.  He was a new father, and his wife was there with their 2 week old baby.  Apparently, his horse acted up and he ended up having an accident and broke the tendons/ligaments in his neck, and if I remember correctly, he broke his back as well, so again, when everyone thinks I've gone through the ringer, remember him in prayer.  He's looking at a 6 month recovery with a brand new baby and young wife.  He'll have some obstacle to overcome.  His family took him home after only 48 hours because his mom said he'd recover better at home, and I have no doubt she's correct.

So Mom tells me my surgery went well.  It was shorter than anticipated because, well, it ended up being a different surgery than originally anticipated.  Dr. Polynice had drawn a diagram thingie to show Mom and Dad what happened instead of what was planned.  Originally, I was supposed to have the gracilis muscle taken from my thigh, but when Dr. Lee opened me up, they solved the answer to one of the problems I've been having.  Wait for it, wait for it.....my uterus had tipped over!!!!!  Yes, that is worthy of five exclamation points.  Apparently, where my large intestine used to be was a large empty void (kind of like my head on most nights) and my uterus decided to be lazy and take a nice long nap.  It laid down in the hole where my intestine used to be and was kinda stuck to the pelvic floor next to the sinus tract that needed to be removed.  When Dr. Polynice saw this, he realized it needed to be propped back up, and my gracilis muscles weren't going to be sufficient enough to do it, so they took one of my abdominal muscles instead.  Everyone has two rectus abdominus muscles, better known as the 6 pack muscles.  The left one of mine (the side under my heart) helps to support my stoma, so they detached the right hand one at the top and flipped it upside down, threading it behind my uterus, and eventually stuffing it down into the sinus tract area of the rectal spot that wasn't healing.  Technically, they killed two birds with one stone, or rather, filled two holes with one muscle.  Dr. Polynice filled the now missing muscle space on the right side of my abdomen with some sterilized pork tissue stuff.  Does this mean when I sweat I'll smell like bacon?  Boy, that'll get me a husband in no time!  And the further good news in all of this?  My value for black market spare body parts has decreased that much more. 

Okay, so back to post op.  Within five minutes of being in the room and getting settled, they bring in a new bed, but it's not just any bed.  Oh no, it's some special fancy schmancy bed that all of the nursing staff seems to be in envy over for me.  Apparently, the bed is called a cavillon or something like that, and it's filled with sand and is hard as a rock, but the minute they plug it in, it becomes like a sandstorm under your body, 'gently cradling it and promoting healing.'  They told me it's like experiencing a water bed.  I protested being transferred, but they insisted and before too many more minutes had passed, a moving crew had passed me from my air bed into this sand bed.  I was in too much pain to notice, but soon I'd find out.  The bed was like the beach, only worse....

It looked like a bug's eye....

Okay.  Wow.  Talk about a whirlwind of a week.  And some stunning alliteration.  But I digress.....

So morning of surgery, we had to leave at 4am, and considering I went to bed around 245am, I was just a tad bit sleepy, and yet on the two hour ride up to Albany, I don't remember sleeping even a minute.  I think my already jumpy nerves were getting the best of me.  My mouth, already dry since after midnight is NPO (nothing to eat or drink, including gum, tooth brushing, etc), is like cotton.  We get there and dad drops mom and me off to go get started in the admission processing.  We go in, get checked in, and I get taken back into the back to start filling out the medical history stuff.  Then they bring in the nurse to start my i.v. to run the sleepy drugs that are normally given pre-surgery.  As anticipated, it hurt like the dickens and my vein blows.  The nurse goes back and gets the 'sure thing,' a woman who is skilled at getting veins of those who are like me.  The woman comes over, says 'I've had you before, right?' and I said 'yup, so hopefully you'll be able to get it.'  Yeah.  Didn't happen.  So my already frayed nerves at this point are completely shot and I burst into tears.  For me, this was a worst case scenario.  I've never been this on edge prior to surgery, and when my veins aren't even able to be gotten by the expert who has gotten them before, it ups the panic tenfold.  They tell me that they aren't going to run the i.v. until I'm under with the gas anesthesia.  Mom and Dad pray over me, and I'm wheeled away.

I've never been in the operating room fully awake.  Never.  I'm usually on the sleepy time i.v. stuff and passed out drooling by the time I'm wheeled away.  It was such a sense of panic to be back there, flat on my back, looking up and around at the massive sterility that is the OR.  The light overhead has to be a minimum of three feet in diameter, made up of at least (or so it seemed) 100 little lights that I knew would soon be peering down into my abdomen, illuminating all for my surgeons to see.  I swear, it looked like a bug's eye.  And in the midst of my soaking up of my surroundings, Dr. Lee walks over.  Greets me with a good morning and how things have been going.  I told him about the increased issues with my uterus, and he assures me he'll take a look and take good care of me, at which time I break down crying again.  The look on Dr. Lee's face scared me.  He asked why, I told him of my feelings, my fears with this surgery, and asked him to bring me through it all.  He reassured me that I was in good hands with both him and Dr. Polynice and that I'd be fine.  Crying.  To my surgeon.  And in the biggest panic you can imagine.  Dr. Polynice also walks in, Dr. Lee grabs him, pulls him aside, briefs him on my lack on emotional stability, and he also came over and reassured me everything would be fine. 

Still sniffling, I laid back down on the gurney and was strapped down, oxygen mask over my face.  I could hear everyone still talking, hear them say to start the gas through the mask.  Unable to move, gas started getting pumped through.  I don't have many fears in life, but it was scary to sense that I was losing oxygen and it was being replaced by something that was making me feel like I was suffocating.  And while breathing as deeply as being told, I went under.....