My surgery…….
Warning: TMI ahead! Proceed with caution!
First of all I have to tell you all how much I appreciate all your sweet texts, comments, emails, phone calls and every bit of support I have gotten from my family, friends, readers, and fellow bloggers over the past 3 weeks. It has been overwhelming in the best kind of way. This was not a blog post I had ever planned on writing, for at least a dozen reasons, but given my unexpected and unexplained absence over the past 3 weeks, I felt like I owed it to y’all to write a post about it and possibly, maybe help someone else who experiences the same thing I did.
I just realized how long this post may be. However, I do not believe in leaving y’all hanging for a part 2 or part 3. There may be a part 2 to this, but only because it has only been 3 weeks and there will probably be more to say on the subject at a later date. I will start from the beginning.
I have, like most Americans been on a million diets. I have gained and lost the same 80 lbs about 15 times. I am a GREAT dieter. I am terrible at maintenance. It seems I need to see the scale going down to keep up my willpower. All of this weight gain and loss, along with the fact that I am 5′ 3” in my tallest pair of shoes and had a 10 lb 12 oz baby, has led me to have a very large amount of skin around my abdomen. I am not talking about just a little mommy pooch and can’t wear a bikini. We are talking, having had to wear compression garments for the past 3 or 4 years just to wear regular clothes. Gravity had taken it’s toll and it kept me from being active and exercising other than walking. I am only 31 years old and I REALLY missed being active and working out. I even tried to work out in my compression gear. It was miserable and hot. I had a lower back injury from playing with my son and when it didn’t heal as fast as I expected, my Dr. mentioned that the extra hanging skin in my abdomen may be causing me problems with my lower back healing. After googling all night, I found out about Panniculectomy surgery, which is performed by plastic surgeons, and is deemed medically necessary for some people for various reasons and a lot of times, covered by insurance. I researched and researched and found out that for people like me, this is our only option. You can not diet or exercise this kind of extra skin away. I got references from friends for a good plastic surgeon and scheduled my consultation.
The day of my consultation I was SO nervous. I am so shy about being undressed in front of strangers, (even doctors) that I physically get ill leading up to any kind of appointment that will involve undressing. As soon as I walked in and the nurse greeted me, I felt instantly at ease. She was an older woman with the kindest, most understanding voice. Then I saw the paper panties laying out on the bed for me and for a split second, started to run away. I didn’t, but it crossed my mind. I put on the ‘one size fit’s all’ paper panties and tried to cover myself with them the best I could. They did provide a huge robe as well, but I am not sure what for because it was only on for about 8 seconds. Then the nurse and doctor come in to examine me and he told me what I already knew. I needed a panniculectomy. There was no other way to get this skin off without surgery, and he felt like I was a good candidate for insurance coverage. All I had left to do was let the sweet older nurse take my PHOTOS TO SEND TO THE INSURANCE COMPANY.
This was probably the most humiliating personal experience in my life and I have had QUITE a few. At one point, I started hyperventilating. The nurse had to stop and start 4 or 5 times because I kept having to crouch down with my head between my knees to get my breathing under control. Finally we were able to get the pictures done. Which were taken in nothing but my bra and the paper panties, from all angles. I understand why this is necessary for insurance coverage and was very glad that it was over with and felt like my biggest hurdle for this surgery was behind me. Boy was I wrong…….
It only took a couple of weeks for my insurance company to approve my surgery and it was scheduled for the next month. I planned everything out that you could possible imagine, made meals ahead of time for a couple days in advance, planned activities for the kids to do while I was recovering, had family members ‘on call’ in case we needed extra help the first few days, and a blog post ready to post the morning of my surgery and a couple to post in the days after my surgery. I honestly thought I would be back to normal within a couple of days because I have had multiple surgeries before, 2 of which were c-sections and the recovery was unbelievably easy for me. Once again…. boy was I wrong…..
The days leading up to my surgery, I was a little nervous, not for the recovery phase, but the normal, ‘oh God, please just let me wake up from surgery, my babies need me,’ kind of nervous. I kept myself busy by getting the house cleaned from top to bottom and spending as much fun time with my kiddos and husband as possible.
The day of surgery, I got up early and packed my suitcase, published my blog post, showered with the stuff they give you to wash with before surgery and my family and I loaded up to go to the hospital. The pre-surgery stuff was like any other I have had, except when the surgeon came in to ‘mark me’ before surgery. Another small hyperventilation, but I powered through.
After my surgery, I was very nauseous even though we took every precaution we could take. (I had the transderm scop patch place behind my ear, zofran, and phenergan, all of which are supposed to help with nausea) I think the reason my nausea was so much worse than any other surgery I have had, is the actual surgery took longer than any other surgery I have had (3 hours). I don’t know this for sure, but that’s all I can figure? I did wake up with 2 drains. I had read about the drains, but it was still shocking to see the long drains sticking out of my body. I was wrong about them though, because I thought they only stayed in 1 or 2 days. Here I am writing this almost 3 weeks later and I still have a drain in. It is just as annoying as you can imagine it being.
After about 2 hours, my nausea was controlled enough that I was able to go home. I went straight home and went to sleep for a few hours. I was taking 2 percocets ever 6 hours for the pain and that is the most pain medicine I have ever taken at one time, but it did control my pain. After 3 or 4 days, I realized we were heading into the weekend and I was getting low on my pain pills. Low enough that I would run out by Saturday. This scared me because I was NO WHERE CLOSE to being able to go without the pills. The pain was so bad that I was literally doing anything I needed to do, (bathroom, shower, whatever) 30 minutes after taking my pills, because that was the only time the pain was controlled enough for me to move that much. I called my surgeons office and asked if they could call me in more pain pills, but less strong ones. The stronger pills were causing me all kinds of trouble, mainly in the bathroom. If You Know What I Mean. They called me in loritabs and they were much better. The pain wasn’t quite as severe by that Saturday so I was easily able to switch over from the stronger percocets to the loritabs. I was able to stay awake longer periods of time and felt less groggy. Me and the kiddos did LOTS of dvd watching and mario playing the first week. They were ROCKSTARS and did such a good job helping take care of mommy when daddy had to go back to work. I wasn’t able to cook the week after my surgery, but I was able to use the computer some, so it worked out SO great that my friend Michaela, from An Affair From The Heart, was going out of town a few days after my surgery. She needed a guest admin and I was so excited when she asked me to fill in. It gave me something to do to fill my cooking void.
By Sunday, I decided that the next day I was going to start weaning myself off the pain pills. I was a week out from surgery, and to be honest, the pills really just mess with my recovery. They always have and I have always stopped taking them as soon as possible following surgery. This was the longest I had ever been on pain pills before and I was ready to feel more like myself. So Monday morning, (1 week after surgery) instead of taking 2 loritabs, I took 1 and 1 tylenol. Then the next time it was time for my dose, I took half of 1 and 1 tylenol. I repeated the half pill and 1 tylenol before bed. (I get severe headaches when I stop taking pain medicine and weaning this way is the best way I have found to limit the headaches) Tuesday morning, when I woke up, I took 2 tylenol. I was DONE with the pain pills. I also started taking some laxatives to try to help with constipation I get from the pain medicine. I’m not going to lie, Tuesday was hard, I still had a good amount of pain but I knew it was not more than I could stand. Wednesday was better. By Thursday, the day of my post op, I was feeling pretty dadgum good. I was excited to walk into the surgeons office and tell them I had been off my pain meds since Tuesday.
When I did get there, they praised me and told me how great I looked and how amazing it was that I was getting around so well and already off the pain meds. I was REALLY feeling good. The Dr took 1 of my drains out and said the other one could probably come out the next week, if everything kept going well. (I still have my other drain in and that week has come and gone so <spoiler alert> things did not continue to go well.) I asked the Dr. If I could resume my walks since walking didn’t hurt and he said that was a great idea, as long as I was comfortable walking. I was SO excited to go for a walk with the kids. We got home from the Dr. and immediately started rubbing down with sunscreen and bug spray. I didn’t even care that it was noon and the hottest part of the day in July in the Summertime! Other than having to hustle back home halfway through our walk for a bathroom break (I was taking laxatives), our walk went great. I even came home and scrambled us some eggs for lunch, then later on, made an easy dinner for everyone. (copy cat Arby’s beef n cheddar sandwiches) My husband was off from his regular job for the 4th of July on Friday so we stayed up later than normal. Around midnight when we headed to bed, I raised my leg to get in the bed and felt the most horrible burning sensation in my abdomen on my left side. I yelled out for my husband and scared him half to death. I thought maybe I had pulled something. It wasn’t my incision hurting, it was deeper. My husband helped me get in bed and I kept hurting. I was scared I had overdone it that day because I had felt so good. I keep thinking of things I had done that could have caused me to hurt myself but nothing I had done had hurt me that day. I finally fell asleep only to awake an hour later in even more pain. I needed to go pee and couldn’t even get out of bed myself. I had to wake my husband up to help to me to the bathroom. He helped me so sweetly. When he saw how much trouble I was having and how much pain I was in, he asked if I thought I needed to go to the emergency room. I reminded him I had just had my post op appointment that morning and everything had looked great and started naming off all the things I had done that day that may have over done it and maybe I was just sore from that. I said we would see how I felt in the morning. Morning got here and I wasn’t any better. I needed help even sitting up in bed. I decided I had pulled a muscle or something and broke down and took 1 pain pill. I didn’t want to spend the 4th of July in the emergency room over a pulled muscle or from being tired from over doing it too soon after surgery, so I decided to wait it out a little while unless I got any worse. My hubby had the morning off from his full time job and didn’t have to go in to his other job until 5 that evening so I was able to spend the day resting. When it was time for him to leave for work, I took the kids to the pool to swim while I propped my feet up and rested some more. My hubby got off early that night and came to the pool to walk home with us. By this time, I was even having trouble walking at all and was walking very slow and hunched over. By the time we got inside my hubby was begging me to go to the emergency room and I knew he was right. This was way more than ‘over doing it’. I laid down in the bed for a couple of minutes, and all the sudden it hit me. I was BURNING up with fever. I asked my hubby if I felt warm to him and as soon as he touched my forehead, he got the most worried look on his face. He ran to get the thermometer. My temperature was 102.6. Right then we knew, I had an infection. This was serious. I hurried and took a 5 minute shower and cleaned out my drain while my hubby packed my suitcase and the kids changed out of their swimsuits. When I went to clean out my drain I saw white pus inside it. This is the first time the fluid in my drain had been anything but red.
We hurried to the emergency room, and by the time I got there my temperature was 103.3. They did my blood work and started me on IV antibiotics immediately. I had an xray and a ct-scan and they told me what we already knew. I had a severe infection. My infection wasn’t in my drain site, or in my incision. Those both looked great, but it was in the tissue of my abdomen and there was nothing me or my Dr. could have done to prevent it. It happens to 30% of people who have panniculectomies. I was admitted to the hospital and told I would need to be there for a couple of days getting IV Antibiotics. The pain was so severe, they were having to give me 20 mg of loritab, followed by a large dose of morphine, an hour later. Rinse and repeat every 3 hours. I. WAS. MISERABLE. The nurses told me that infection can cause some of the worst pain you can imagine, and being in my abdomen, the part of my body I use to move just about everything, made it so much worse. At this point my abdomen was hurting so bad, I could not even pick my feet up to walk. I was having to shuffle to the bathroom…even with the morphine and loritabs. Saturday was just as bad as Friday. They said I would need to be on the IV antiobiotics for 24-36 hours before I felt any relief, because my infection was so severe. My husband brought my kids to see me every night I was there. It was so hard being away from my family. Sunday, the Dr. came in and told me my culture came back and showed staph. Obviously I was terrified, but the Dr. also said that I am young and otherwise healthy and we caught it super early, and as long as I got more IV antibiotics in me, that he felt like I would be ok and still be able to leave the hospital in a day or 2, and would need to go home on very strong oral antibiotics. This sounded promising. I texted my family and told them the news and they were understandably worried. 24 hours on IV had passed, then 36, then 48, and I started getting worried, because I never felt any better. Monday morning, however, I finally felt a tad bit better. I was able to walk to the bathroom almost normally. I told the nurse and she was very excited for me. I have to say, the nurses were some of the best I have ever had. Then the doctor came in and was smiling and asked if I was feeling better. YES!!!! I told him. Finally! Some improvement!!! He said my blood work came back and it looked so much better. He still had to talk to my other doctor, but there was a chance I may get to go home that evening! I was so excited. I told the nurse, no more pain pills and asked if I could walk the halls some. I had to prepare to go home and be ‘mommy’ again. I walked the halls and kept feeling a little better each time. That afternoon after being off the pain medicine all day, and lots of walking, I was finally able to have a bowel movement. (this is a huge deal!) I was very motivated at this time to do everything possible to help myself get better so I could go home to my family! All this walking and excitement had worn me out so I took an afternoon nap. I woke up at 5, just in time for the other Dr. to come in and tell me the good news! I was going home!!!! I texted my husband and he and the kids were at the pool and he said the kids were so excited about mommy coming home that they didn’t even complain about pool time getting cut short. 😉
I was so excited to come home yesterday. I was not very excited that it seems like this infection has set my recovery back a couple of weeks. I am hurting as bad as I did a few days after surgery. I don’t know when I will get my drain out. It may be another week or 2. I also must add, that I am very thankful for my surgery, even though we have had this bump in the road, because of all the trouble I have had, I can still feel the difference in my mobility already. I can tell it will just get better from here too. This surgery was not a tummy tuck. I will still not be able to wear a bikini and I will still look atrocious undressed, but I can tell I will be able to be more active, possibly lose a few more pounds, and just feel better. I will be a better mother to my kids and wife to my husband.
I can not finish writing this without telling you how amazing Michaela, from An Affair From The Heart, was when she found out I was in the hospital. She immediately took over adminning my fb page for me all weekend and the first part of this week. She did an amazing job and I am so very thankful.
I leave you with this. If you have surgery, any kind of surgery, and for any reason start to feel worse. Please don’t try to tough it out. Call your Dr. Go to the emergency room. Keep a thermometer close at hand too! I am so glad I didn’t go to sleep Friday night and something told me to check my temperature. My story might have been way different had I not. Thank God for that.
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